ITALY: More than a hundred Poles, lured to Italy by the promise of work, have disappeared there, according to the website of the Polish police.
It is feared that some were murdered while working like slave labourers in the tomato fields of Puglia.
Half of the missing are believed to have taken jobs on tomato farms around the city of Foggia in Puglia, huge operations which employ up to 7,000 workers at a time.
In July, Italian and Polish police seized 25 people after an inquiry revealed that thousands of Poles had been hired to work on farms which were subsequently described by the chief organised crime prosecutor of Italy as "out and out concentration camps".
The police said that the workers were fed on not much more than bread and water, forced to work for up to 15 hours a day, paid very little and beaten by the guards.
The inquiry reportedly also uncovered evidence of murder. The Italian daily La Repubblica said police had heard a farm guard tell his girlfriend that two of his charges had escaped.
"I'll not allow them to behave like that," he was quoted as saying. "I've said that today I'll kill one or two as an example."
The paper said police in Puglia, in Italy's "heel", were looking into the deaths of 14 Poles and a Lithuanian, who could have been murdered.
Some were burned to death, others were drowned or run over.
The Polish website www.policja.pl is carrying the names of 123 people who have vanished over the past six years after saying they were going to Italy to work.- (Guardian service)