Jail for bungling jet ski people smugglers

A GANG of people smugglers who hatched an “alarmingly amateur” plot to bring migrants across the English Channel on jet skis have been jailed.

Seven men, including Kent-based trafficking criminals and their Albanian “travel agents”, were said to have “scant regard” for safety during a string of bungled operations. At least 18 Albanian migrants were transported from near Calais to Dymchurch in Kent in 2016, using dangerously overcrowded inflatable boats designed for six.

When the rigid-hulled inflatable boats got into trouble, ran out of fuel and had to be rescued, the plotters bought a three-person jet ski for their next mission.

A National Crime Agencyled surveillance operation put a stop to the unlikely plan, which would have taken migrants across the world’s busiest shipping route. The men were arrested and convicted of conspiracy to breach immigration law.

Yesterday, Judge Mark Dennis QC sentenced father and son Leonard and George Powell, the so called “organisers of the conspiracy”, to nine years and six years and nine months imprisonment respectively during a hearing at the Old Bailey.

Mr Powell’s other son Alfie, 39, of no fixed address, was jailed for six years. Sabah Dulaj, 24, of south-east London and Artur Nutaj, 39 – said to be “leading figures” in the plot who provided the link between the smugglers and migrants in Europe, were jailed for seven years.

Co-conspirators Wayne Bath, 39, of Sheerness, Kent, and Albert Letchford, 42, of Dartford, received six years for their roles in the plot.

The judge said: “The execution of the smuggling operation at times proved to be alarmingly amateur and could have resulted in tragic consequences at sea.”