Three Frenchmen and two Iraqi Kurds went on trial in Dunkirk yesterday accused of making vast profits from smuggling migrants across the Channel.
In a case that highlights the surge in trafficking around Dunkirk, the alleged ring leaders are said to have employed residents to help to build a network that hid refugees inside the lorries of compliant drivers bound for England.
The trial began a day after four other suspected Kurdish traffickers caused a motorway pile-up near the port while fleeing police in a British-registered car.
The smuggling ring, one of several uncovered recently in the area, was dismantled in February when the makeshift camp at Grande-Synthe, near Dunkirk, was closed and replaced by a managed refugee centre. The five accused face possible prison terms of ten years if convicted.
“We have a taxi driver who took people to discreet places to reach the lorries, and the people who ran a café in the centre of Grande-Synthe that turned out to be the true headquarters of the smugglers,” said Amélie Le Sant, the assistant prosecutor.
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She alleges that the gang would provide passage on a lorry and charged €5,000-10,000 per person. An initial deposit was paid in France, followed by the remainder after their clients’ safe arrival in England. In a few months they had allegedly transferred more than €300,000 to France from the UK.
Migrant-smuggling gangs have shifted their focus to the Dunkirk area after the security clampdown at Calais late last year and the dismantling of part of the Jungle refugee camp.