Channel smugglers still offer discounts on ‘death-trap’ dinghies
Even as small-boat trafficker jailed over death of four migrants...
SMUGGLERS are still offering discounts to migrants for piloting ‘death trap’ dinghies to Britain even as one was locked up for killing four passengers.
An undercover Mail investigation found people-trafficking gangs were brazenly putting more lives at risk by touting perilous passage to the UK in the same week a migrant became the first person to be convicted of steering a ‘grossly overcrowded’ boat which sank.
Senegalese Ibrahima Bah, who had offered to steer the small boat in December 2022 in exchange for a free crossing, was sentenced to nine and a half years on Friday for manslaughter and facilitating illegal entry to the UK at Canterbury Crown Court.
His terrified passengers had screamed ‘we are going to die’ as they plunged into the freezing water after the home-made inflatable, designed for a maximum of
‘Many ended up in the sea’
20, began sinking after it was packed with at least 44 people, the court heard.
At least four died, but the judge said there were ‘very probably’ other victims whose bodies were not recovered.
Even as the shocking case reached its conclusion, heartless Kurdish people smugglers operating in northern France happily took bookings for more migrants hoping to get to the UK illegally.
And one criminal told an undercover Mail reporter the day after Bah’s conviction there was a special €500 (£427) discount for those prepared to pilot the boat.
Advertising on a TikTok page with almost 2,000 followers, the criminals posted images of boats showing a map of the Channel and good weather forecast with two dates for crossings this week.
On the day of Bah’s conviction they featured a picture of the top of the dinghy heading across the Channel as dawn broke.
The gang also urged migrants from Albania, Vietnam, Iran, Kurdistan, Turkey and Pakistan to contact them to arrange passage.
When an undercover reporter posing as an Albanian migrant contacted via TikTok, the gang promised him a trip for €2,500 (£2,135). Asked if there was a discount to steer, the smuggler responded: ‘€ 2,000 (£ 1,708). Provided you can drive the boat.’
And despite repeated tragedies with boats sinking, the smuggler shamelessly claimed: ‘ I don’t gamble on people’s lives.’
Sentencing Bah, Mr Justice Johnson said the boat ‘was about as dangerous and inadequate as it is possible to imagine’, adding: ‘It was grossly overcrowded.
‘It was a death trap, just as every other boat of its type which sets off across the Channel in similar circumstances is a death trap.
‘The floor of the boat collapsed. Many ended up in the sea.
‘You persisted [with the journey] over a prolonged period of time despite the ever increasing and obvious risk. You disregarded what was a very high risk of death.’
It is understood Bah will serve his sentence in a young offenders institute until he is 21, before being moved to an adult prison.
His age is unknown, but the court accepted he was around 20.
Meanwhile, around 200 migrants were yesterday seen being escorted into Dover by UK border force staff. The migrants – including women and children – were picked up at sea by a patrolling Border Force vessel.
Home Office figures show 24,830 migrants arrived in the UK by small boat between January and September last year. It was 33,048 over the same period in 2022.
The cost of housing asylum seekers in hotels is around £8million a day, the Government says.