EUROPOL RAIDS SMASH NETWORK OF SUSPECTED PEOPLE SMUGGLERS
▶ Gang is believed to have trafficked Middle Eastern and African migrants across English Channel
Raids across Europe by hundreds of police officers have dismantled a people smuggling operation that transported migrants across the English Channel in flimsy boats.
German police raided properties and warehouses in four states used by the Iraqi-Kurdish network. The smugglers were suspected of charging migrants from the Middle East and East Africa a significant fee to take the perilous journey from France to the UK.
More than 660 German Federal Police officers, thought to include the elite GSG9 special forces unit, were involved in the Europol-run operation, which led to 25 arrests.
A further 15 arrests were made by police in Belgium and France. The investigation, under a task force named “Wave” has been active for 18 months.
Life jackets and fuel cans were seized by the German Federal Police. Earlier this year dinghies and engines were seized.
The arrests come after the conviction of an asylum seeker in Britain over the deaths of four migrants who drowned in the English Channel when an inflatable boat that he was piloting sank.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser hailed the operation as dealing “a big and important blow to these unscrupulous criminals, who put people’s lives on the line for the sake of their profit”.
Europol said the “investigation focused on an Iraqi-Kurdish network suspected of smuggling Middle Eastern and East African irregular migrants from France to the UK using low-quality inflatable boats”.
Germany’s Interior Ministry said the raids were carried out under 25 European arrest warrants in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Bavaria and Schleswig-Holstein.
Police officers carried out the raid on 28 properties in cities including Dusseldorf and Cologne.
Ms Faeser revealed that “more than 660 federal police officers were deployed” in the raids.
“In the past few months, federal police have already secured materials such as inflatable dinghies and engines, which were meant to be used for trafficking across the English Channel to the UK,” she said. “Fighting organised smuggling crime is a very high priority for us.”
Italian police said on Wednesday they had arrested 12 suspected human traffickers for allegedly organising highspeed transfers for at least 73 illegal migrants from Tunisia.
Expert pilots operated the speed boats crossing from Tunisia to Marsala in Sicily between June and September last year, police said, describing them as “VIP trips”.
The traffickers transferred relatively small groups of up to 20 people on each of four trips, charging fees of up to €6,000 ($6,500) per person.
Normally migrants are charged €1,000 to travel on overcrowded, dangerous boats.
An investigation by The National previously revealed how boats made in Turkey using flimsy materials were transported across Europe and used by criminal gangs to take migrants across the English Channel.
At least 27 people including a pregnant woman and three children died when a boat sank in 2021.
The arrests in Europe come after Ibrahima Bah was found guilty of the manslaughter of the migrants.
During his trial jurors were told the home-built, low-quality inflatable boat, used by Bah, should have had no more than 20 people on board but was used to try to carry at least 43 people across the Channel.
Last year, a man who reportedly trafficked 10,000 migrants across the English Channel in small boats, earning up to £260,000 a trip, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in Belgium.
Hewa Rahimpur, 30, claimed asylum in the UK before he turned to people-smuggling.
The UK’s National Crime Agency seized 60 boats and hundreds of life jackets from a warehouse in Germany used by the criminal operation run by Rahimpur from his house near London.