French Court Jails 18 Members of Channel People Smuggling Gang

A French court on Tuesday issued prison terms of up to 15 years to 18 people, mainly Iraqi Kurds, convicted of forming a vast gang to smuggle migrants aboard small boats across the Channel to England.

The investigation found that this particular network, between 2020 and 2022, had great control over migrant crossings from France to England, which have cost dozens of lives in the last years.

The stiffest sentence of 15 years in prison was given to Iraqi national Mirkhan Rasoul, 26, who was accused of being the leader of the network and coordinating its actions from his French prison cell after previous convictions.

The sentences issued by the court in the northern city of Lille for the other 17 accused, who included one woman, ranged from one to 12 years in jail.

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“The defendants are not volunteers helping their fellow humans but merchants of death,” the prosecutor said during the trial, describing how boats were loaded with passengers “up to 15 times their theoretical capacity”.

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Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said in a statement that one of the men convicted had been arrested by British authorities and extradited to France for the trial.

Kaiwan Poore, 40, was detained by British officers at Manchester Airport as he attempted to board a flight to Turkey in July 2022. He was given a five-year sentence by the Lille court.

The NCA said that each single crossing of migrants from France to England stood to net the criminal network around 100,000 euros ($109,000) in profit.

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