SHARE
COPY LINK

IMMIGRATION

English Channel migrant smugglers jailed by French court

A French court on Friday jailed two Iraqis and one Iranian man for organising illegal migrant boat journeys across the English Channel.

English Channel migrant smugglers jailed by French court
Photo: AFP

A 30-year-old Iraqi, considered the group leader, received an 18-month sentence from the court in Boulogne, on the northern French coast.

His two accomplices, a 30-year-old Iranian and a 39-year-old Iraqi, were each jailed for a year and all three men were banned from French territory.

French border police were first alerted when the manager of a boat supply store contacted them in December over suspect sales of inflatable dinghies, a vessel of choice for people smugglers transporting migrants and refugees from France to Britain.

The subsequent enquiry implicated the three suspects in the organisation of migrant boat runs from several northern French ports including Calais and Sangatte.

Some 500 people — most of them over the last two months of 2018 — attempted to cross the Channel to Britain last year, compared with just 13 known attempts in 2017.

London in December dispatched a navy ship to help coastguard boats watch
over the 33 kilometres of sea that separate France and Britain at its narrowest point.

France also responded by announcing broader surveillance measures in early January.

The number of Channel crossings was just a tiny fraction of the 55,756 successful attempts made across the Mediterranean to Spain that were recorded by the UN's refugee agency in 2018.

READ ALSO: UK to help France fund fight against migrant Channel crossings

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

CRIME

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Germany said Tuesday it was considering allowing deportations to Afghanistan, after an asylum seeker from the country injured five and killed a police officer in a knife attack.

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Officials had been carrying out an “intensive review for several months… to allow the deportation of serious criminals and dangerous individuals to Afghanistan”, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told journalists.

“It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Faeser said.

“That is why we are doing everything possible to find ways to deport criminals and dangerous people to both Syria and Afghanistan,” she said.

Deportations to Afghanistan from Germany have been completely stopped since the Taliban retook power in 2021.

But a debate over resuming expulsions has resurged after a 25-year-old Afghan was accused of attacking people with a knife at an anti-Islam rally in the western city of Mannheim on Friday.

A police officer, 29, died on Sunday after being repeatedly stabbed as he tried to intervene in the attack.

Five people taking part in a rally organised by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical Islam, were also wounded.

Friday’s brutal attack has inflamed a public debate over immigration in the run up to European elections and prompted calls to expand efforts to expel criminals.

READ ALSO: Tensions high in Mannheim after knife attack claims life of policeman

The suspect, named in the media as Sulaiman Ataee, came to Germany as a refugee in March 2013, according to reports.

Ataee, who arrived in the country with his brother at the age of only 14, was initially refused asylum but was not deported because of his age, according to German daily Bild.

Ataee subsequently went to school in Germany, and married a German woman of Turkish origin in 2019, with whom he has two children, according to the Spiegel weekly.

Per the reports, Ataee was not seen by authorities as a risk and did not appear to neighbours at his home in Heppenheim as an extremist.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors on Monday took over the investigation into the incident, as they looked to establish a motive.

SHOW COMMENTS