3 British ‘people smugglers’ held at Dunkirk camp
THREE British men accused of people smuggling were arrested yesterday after French riot police stormed a migrant camp in Dunkirk.
Officers also seized three UK-registered cars as they searched for weapons following a spate of shootings at the camp.
Dunkirk has been inundated with migrants following a clampdown at nearby Calais to prevent people stowing away in UK-bound lorries.
Migrants living in the camp in Teteghem, a suburb of the port town, have been subjected to a ‘reign of terror’ by people smugglers armed with handguns and Kalashnikovs, it was claimed last night.
Some 100 armed French officers entered the camp at 9am yesterday after complaints by the local mayor. In a two-hour raid, they arrested the three alleged people smugglers, understood to be British men of Middle Eastern origin, and seized a BMW and two Fords.
The officers also took photographs of bullet marks on containers that were converted into accommodation for migrants.
After the raid, Teteghem mayor Franck Dhersin said: ‘I hope this is the beginning of the end of the reign of terror which the people smugglers, who work for gangsters based in London, have imposed for weeks and months now.’ He warned that people smugglers control the camps, charging migrants to sleep there and for access to clean water, despite huts and tap water being supplied for free. He added that last week 17 cars with British numberplates were parked ‘blatantly’ at the camp.
People smugglers in Teteghem also used Kalashnikovs to instill terror, French newspaper La Voix du Nord reported last night. A police source said: ‘The way things are going there will be someone killed there.’
Mr Dhersin said there are now 371 migrants at the camp, up from less than 100 three weeks ago, and a total of at least 1,500 in camps around Dunkirk, with more arriving every day.
He said: ‘Dunkirk is rapidly becoming another Calais, but without the fencing and riot police that Calais has. The situation is out of control.’ He added that many migrants still see Britain as an ‘El Dorado’.
Meanwhile four Albanian people smugglers were jailed by a court in Boulogne yesterday for charging 50 migrants £3,000 each to be smuggled on to lorries bound for the UK while the drivers slept at motorway stops.