French court jails 18 members of English Channel people-smuggling network
Al Jazeera
The longest sentence of 15 years is given to Iraqi national Mirkhan Rasoul, who was accused of leading the network.
A French court has found 18 people guilty in a major people-smuggling trial that has shed light on the often deadly business of transporting migrants and refugees on small boats across the English Channel from France to the United Kingdom.
The defendants were swept up in a pan-European police operation in 2022 that led to dozens of arrests.
The longest sentence of 15 years in prison was handed down on Tuesday to Iraqi national Mirkhan Rasoul, 26, who was accused of being the leader of the network and coordinating its actions from his French prison cell after previous convictions.
The sentences issued by the court in the northern city of Lille for the other 17 accused, who included one woman, ranged from two to 10 years in prison.
“These sentences are obviously very severe,” Kamel Abbas, a lawyer who represented one of the defendants already imprisoned in France, was quoted as saying by The Associated Press news agency. “That’s a testimony of the scale of the case and of the intention to severely punish the smugglers.”
