Five members of a network of smugglers to the United Kingdom, having allowed the passage of hundreds of migrants, have been sentenced in France by the criminal court of Boulogne-sur-Mer, near Calais, to sentences ranging from 18 months suspended sentence of two years in prison.
Three men and two women, aged 20 to 29, four French and one Iraqi, were part of this chain of smugglers. One of the defendants, a Frenchman, admitted having played an important role.
The investigation began last January, on the basis of Dutch information on the routing of small boats from Germany and transiting through the Netherlands, reports AFP. It was in Germany that one of the defendants went to get the boats which he then brought back to the North of France. The boats were stored in a shed in Lille before being transported to the coast.
In total, 13 boats that can carry 50 migrants each were seized by investigators along with engines, life jackets and fuel. It would even be the largest seizure of nautical equipment ever made in France, according to the Central Office for the Repression of irregular immigration.
” The network would have allowed 1,547 attempts or successful passages, favoring the crossing of at least 2,600 migrants “, from the northern coast of France to the English coasts, underlined the prosecutor.
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At the end of October, six members of an Iraqi-Kurdish network of migrant smugglers to Great Britain were arrested in northern France. The investigation, opened at the end of July, started this time from a ” british intelligence “to identify” the delivery of nautical equipment from Turkey to a storage location in Douai (north), according to an official from Ocriest, the central office specializing in the fight against irregular immigration.
Illegal crossings between the French and English coasts have increased significantly in recent years, since access to the French port of Calais and the Channel Tunnel was locked down by law enforcement.
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