Royal Navy ship to combat Iranian migrant crossings

Britain has stationed a Royal Navy vessel in the English Channel to counter a surge of Iranian migrants crossing the congested waterway only hours after the arrest of two suspected smuggling kingpins by police.

HMS Mersey, an offshore patrol ship, is normally used to monitor fishing boats and trawlers to prevent illegal fishing but now gains an expanded remit. The ship’s new role will be to use advanced radar equipment to spot small craft.

The ship is expected to remain on station until two border patrol cutters can return from postings in the Mediterranean Sea. Officials had been reluctant to take the high-profile step, fearing the vessel could act as a magnet for those looking to be picked up and taken to UK shores.

The government estimates that 312 migrants used small boats to cross the Channel from France last year. The latest boat, local media reported, carried 12 people who arrived on the south-east coast this past week.

British officials said the two men arrested are suspected of smuggling migrants from France to England by sea.

Most of the Iranians involved are believed to have been smuggled from Belgrade to the north France coast by mafia gangs who reached Europe through a now-defunct visa-free travel scheme.

“NCA officers have arrested a 33-year-old Iranian national and a 24-year-old British man in Manchester on suspicion of arranging the illegal movement of migrants across the English Channel into the UK,” the National Crime Agency said.

The men are being questioned but have not been charged or identified.

The arrests are the first since Britain’s Home Secretary Sajid Javid declared a rise in migrant crossings to be a “major incident”, despite the overall numbers being small compared with the thousands who have tried to reach European Union territory by crossing the Mediterranean from northern Africa and Turkey.

Mr Javid questioned whether migrants using small boats to cross the Channel, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, were genuine asylum seekers and not motivated simply by better economic prospects.

“If you are a genuine asylum seeker why have you not sought asylum in the first safe country that you arrived in?” he said.