Police break up people-smuggling gang

PARIS - Police across Europe claimed yesterday to have broken up a people-smuggling gang which had brought 4,000 illegal immigrants into Britain in the last five years.

Simultaneous raids in France, Italy, Britain, Turkey and Greece led to the arrest of 53 people suspected of charging up to €7,000 a time to smuggle Afghans and Iraqi Kurds into the UK via Calais.

Some Pakistanis, Somalis and Ethiopians are also said to have used the services of what is believed to be the most elaborate people-smuggling gang ever to operate between France and Britain.

Another branch of the network is alleged to have smuggled migrants into Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

French police said that 22 people - all Afghans, Iranians and Iraqis - were arrested in France, 18 in Italy, seven in Britain and three each in Turkey and Greece.

"The organisers ended up having the monopoly on smuggling illegal immigrants of all nationalities into Britain," said Denis Pajaud, head of the French police agency which investigates illicit migration.

The Paris public prosecutor's office said the five-nation police investigation, spread over three years, was the largest of its kind ever conducted in Europe.

The immigrants passed through Turkey, Greece and Italy.

They were brought to Paris or Calais, where they were smuggled aboard British-bound trucks, sometimes with the knowledge of the drivers, sometimes without.

French investigators believe that three of the suspects arrested in Britain were the head of the operation and his two right-hand men.

They said that British police had seized hundreds of fake Iraqi and Iranian passports and identity papers.

France expects the trio to be extradited across the Channel within the next month.

Apart from the alleged smugglers, French police also arrested yesterday 49 illegal immigrants or asylum seekers in Paris and Calais.

Over 400 asylum seekers from up to ten countries are currently in Calais trying to reach Britain.

Most of them do not have the resources to pay professional people-smugglers to cross the Channel.

- INDEPENDENT