Smugglers told migrant’s family he had arrived safely
Iraqi among 27 migrants who lost lives after he become caught up in Lukashenko’s ‘shadow war’
‘Across Europe we all need to step up, take responsibility, and work together in a time of crisis’
PEOPLE smugglers told the family of a migrant feared to have died in Wednesday’s Channel tragedy that he had reached the UK safely.
The Sunday Telegraph has acquired a recording of a voice message left by the criminal gang hours after the ill-fated boat put to sea, in an apparent attempt to obtain the full fee for the crossing.
The gang leader, who is understood now to have fled to Italy, told the family of Deniz Ahmed Mohammed, 27: “I put him in last night and they reached the other side. Tell your family not to worry.”
Yesterday, migrants near Dunkirk spoke of a “famous office” in Kurdistan used by the cartels to arrange the booking and payment for crossings.
Some people smugglers are only paid in full once their passengers reach the English coast.
This newspaper can also disclose that at least one of the 27 victims believed to have drowned in the disaster entered the EU from Belarus, where the Moscow-backed dictator Alexander Lukashenko has pushed thousands westwards in what has been described as a proxy war.
It came as Priti Patel said the UK could not tackle the crisis alone.
“Across Europe we all need to step up, take responsibility, and work together in a time of crisis,” she said.
The Home Secretary was speaking ahead of a meeting of ministers in France today to which she was disinvited in retaliation for Boris Johnson’s open letter to President Emmanuel Macron.
Migrants in the Grande-Synthe camp outside Dunkirk yesterday revealed in detail how their families paid people smugglers to help them reach the UK.
One 18-year-old from Ranya in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq said: “In Kurdistan there is an office, a very famous office that is run by the cartel and smugglers.
“My family in Kurdistan will go to the office and they will pay the smugglers if I make it across. The smugglers send them a message to let them know whether I have or not.”
A source close to Deniz Ahmed Mohammed’s family said the smugglers’ voice message was received by his brother, who remains in Belarus.
A MIGRANT believed to have drowned in the Channel last week was one of thousands pushed into the EU by the Belarusian dictator.
Deniz Ahmed Mohammed, originally from Kurdistan in northern Iraq, separated from his brother in the eastern European country and made his way to France, messaging his family to “pray for us” in the early hours of Wednesday as he set out for England in a flimsy boat.
The 27-year-old appears to have fallen victim to Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko’s “hybrid war”, which has deliberately channelled thousands of desperate people into Poland in an attempt to destabilise the EU.
Migrants have been lured into Belarus on easy-to-obtain visas, prompting claims Mr Lukashenko has engineered the weeks-long crisis. Only last week he personally urged those at the border to “go westwards”, telling them: “We will work together on your dream”.
Mr Mohammed’s distraught brother remains in Belarus, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. The older man was initially told by the people smugglers believed to be responsible for Wednesday’s tragedy that the crossing had completed safely, in an apparent attempt to secure full payment for the doomed crossing. A source close to the family said he was now “totally traumatised and psychologically in a very bad place”.
The gang responsible are understood to be a roughly 10-strong group of Iranian Kurds living in Calais.
A senior member was described as “taking a lot of drugs” and being violent and aggressive.
The ringleaders are now believed to have fled northern France for Italy, having gone quiet on social media.
It came as further details emerged about the people smugglers’ modus
‘We pay around £2,500 to go on the boat and the smugglers are often Pakistani, Iraqi or Iranian’
operandi.
A 20-year-old migrant at the GrandeSynthe camp outside Dunkirk said migrants hoping to reach England were forced to use the smugglers’ low-quality boats. “If you buy a boat people here will stop you doing it yourself,” he said.
“The smugglers do not let you, you are not allowed. A lot of the people who come to this camp are armed.”
Another man, a 30-year-old from Afghanistan, said: “We pay around £2,500 to go on the boat and the smugglers are often Pakistani, Iraqi or Iranian. They often force you to build the boat as well, pumping it up and taking it to the water.
Following Wednesday’s disaster pictures emerged of the crumpled inflatable, likened to a “paddling pool”, involved in the failed crossing.
While it is not known what caused the boat to capsize, one theory is that it was swamped by the wash of a passing ship, or that a panic on the heavily overcrowded vessel caused it to unbalance.
It emerged on Wednesday that a migrant had been shot in the kneecaps on the same night as the ill-fated boat put to sea after he refused to board a boat.
Meanwhile last night it was reported that migrants were ordered to switch their phones off before embarking on the voyage.
According to The Sunday Times, Mohammed Shekha, a 21-year-old shepherd from Kurdish Iran, sent his mother a voice message saying: “He is saying we have to switch our phones off. It’s not like last time, OK? We are leaving, God Willing. Pray for me.”
It came as Michel Barnier, who is campaigning to become the next president of France, called for the republic to tear up the current arrangement with Britain and let all migrants travel to the UK to claim asylum.
After she was disinvited from a meeting of interior ministers in France today, Priti Patel said last night: “We will not shy away from the challenge we face, and next week I will continue to push for greater cooperation with European partners because a failure to do so could result in even worse scenes in the freezing water during the coming winter months.”