Two human smugglers detained in Oborniki after calling police on their own clients
Two men who called police in Oborniki claiming they were attacked by nine foreigners turned out to be human smugglers themselves. Police detained the pair and launched a manhunt that found all nine Afghan nationals by 23:40 on 8 August 2026.
A call that unravelled
On Saturday 8 August 2026 at approximately 18:30, the duty officer at the County Police Headquarters in Oborniki received a call from two foreign nationals at a local fuel station. The men, travelling in two separate vehicles, reported that a group of nine foreigners had emerged from a nearby cornfield and asked to be driven to the Polish-German border. When the drivers refused, the group allegedly became aggressive, took their car keys, and fled back into the cornfield.
Officers dispatched to the scene quickly concluded that the account did not hold together. As the Komenda Powiatowa Policji w Obornikach stated, the version presented by the drivers "mija się z prawdą" (does not match the truth). The two callers were in fact participants in a human-smuggling operation moving undocumented migrants along an east-to-west route. Both men were detained on the spot and brought to the police station in Oborniki.
- Two foreign nationals call police at a fuel station in Oborniki, claiming a group of nine foreigners took their car keys
- Officers on scene determine the callers' story is false and detain both men as suspected human smugglers
- Manhunt launched with reinforced police units from Oborniki and Poznań searching fields and forests
- All nine Afghan nationals found and detained near Oborniki and surrounding forests
The manhunt
Once the two suspected smugglers were in custody, police launched a large-scale search for the nine individuals who had disappeared into the cornfield. Reinforced units from both the Oborniki and Poznań police forces were mobilised through the alarm system. The search extended across fields and forests in the Oborniki area and continued for roughly five hours.
By 23:40 the same evening, officers had located and detained all nine individuals. Police confirmed that those detained were Afghan nationals. According to TVP.info, press officer mł. asp. Krzysztof Polzin said the nine most likely entered Poland through Lithuania or Latvia, part of a smuggling channel operating from Belarus.
Smuggling route context
The TVP.info report placed the incident within a broader pattern of migrant smuggling from Belarus. According to the article, the route through Lithuania or Latvia began operating at full capacity after the barrier on the Poland-Belarus border was completed, a period during which the Poland-Belarus crossing was the most heavily used entry point for migrants from Asia and Africa between 2021 and 2024. The article described this as the legacy of operation "Śluza," organised by Belarusian and Russian services to destabilise EU member states through mass migration.
Polzin told TVP.info that a conflict most likely erupted between the couriers and their clients during a stop, and the clients took the car keys out of desperation.
Zgłaszający okazali się częścią systemu przemytniczego i uczestniczyli w przerzucie nielegalnych migrantów na trasie Wschód-Zachód.
What happens next
Procedural and deportation proceedings have been initiated against all nine Afghan nationals. The two detained drivers face charges related to human smuggling. Polzin indicated that further details would be released on Monday. The detained Afghan nationals were fed and medically examined before proceedings began.
