A French court has sentenced six members of a people smuggling network operating in the English Channel, who generated over 1.6 million euros in profits, to between two and five years in prison.
Alan Mohammad Ali, a 33-year-old from Iraq, is said to have been the leader of the network and was sentenced to five years in prison to be followed by deportation at the end of his sentence. He is also accused of transporting equipment from Turkey and overloading poor-quality boats with migrants in order to make as much money per boat as he could.
Another migrant, 26-year-old Afghan national Naweed-Ullah Safi, was sentenced to two years in prison after being recruited by Ali while working at a local kebab shop in Douai and was tasked with locating migrants who wanted to cross the Channel to the United Kingdom, the European Union-funded website InfoMigrants reports.
The other four members of the group; two Iraqis, a French national and a Sudanese man, were also sentenced to two years in prison each for their roles in the smuggling network. According to prosecutor Aurélie La Rosa, the main motivation for the smugglers was pure greed.
Following a three-month-long police investigation aided by British intelligence, French authorities managed to seize four “poor quality” boats and 113 life jackets that were also described as being of unreliable quality after being tipped off to delivery of nautical equipment from Turkey.
On the other side of the Channel, another smuggler was engaged in smuggling migrants out of the UK, after smuggling a group of 15 men from France initially. Reports claim that the group had decided after just an hour in the UK that they wanted to head to Spain.
The smuggler, a man from Morocco, was caught by French police on January 31st and taken into custody, with the 15 migrants, all from Morocco as well, also found inside his van.
Last year, the UK saw a record 45,000 illegal immigrants cross the Channel in small boats and British authorities are expecting that record to be smashed again this year with some proposing that as many as 65,000 may arrive.