Unmasked: The trio of human traffickers who made £1m from Channel migrant crossings

  • Mohammad Fiate (22) and two Kurdish colleagues (25 years) have been imprisoned
  • The trio raked in more than £1million by sending  migrants across the Channel
  • They were sentenced just weeks after the sinking of a boat carrying migrants off Calais. This left at least 27 dead.










Three traffickers who raked in more than £1million by sending hundreds of migrants across the Channel into Britain can be unmasked today.

Syrian Mohammad Fiate (22 years old) and Sharam Shorsh, 25-years-old Kurdish friends, were jailed after they facilitated more than 500 border crossings.

The guilty verdicts were delivered just weeks following the sinking off Calais of a migrants boat, which left 27 others dead.

At the court in the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, northern France, prosecutor Adeline Depardon told the smugglers: ‘What stands out here is your disregard for other people’s lives, that human beings are a commodity.’

Their guilty verdicts came just weeks after a migrant boat sank off Calais, leaving at least 27 people dead

They were sentenced just weeks after the sinking of a boat carrying migrants off Calais. This left at least 27 dead.

Fiate, the main player of the six-week operation, will be serving four years in prison. A senior French judicial source said the 22-year-old’s behaviour bore the hallmarks of someone high up in the trafficking network.

Shorsh was given a two-year sentence, while Haldin was handed a twelve month sentence. The prosecution demanded harsher sentences, including up to seven-year imprisonments.

They helped hundreds upon thousands of immigrants illegally enter Britain from June 27 to August 9.

They charged between €2,000 [£1,700] and €3,000 [£2,500] per person, netting more than £1million, police said. The money was not recovered and passed up in the chain. After performing a routine identity check, police stopped the car of the suspects and arrested them in Calais in the morning hours of August 10.

Mail reports that officers found 16 inflatable buoys soaked in water and a notebook containing the names and amounts of hundreds of migrants. Some were even marked ‘baby’. Their most successful crossing occurred on July 19, according to court records. They piled 83 passengers onto the dinghy.

Fiate wiped away tears throughout his cross-examination as Mrs Depardon told him: ‘At no moment did you think about the migrants who could have died at sea, but only about yourself.’

All three helped hundreds of migrants sneak into Britain illegally between June 27 and August 9

These three individuals helped hundreds of illegal migrants to sneak into Britain between June 27th and August 9th.

All three men pleaded innocence and ignorance throughout the investigation and the final court hearing

The investigation was a success and all three of the men were found guilty.

‘I did it to pay for my crossing,’ he claimed. ‘I am not a smuggler. I obey the traffickers because they frighten me.’

Kamel Abbas, a defence lawyer said that his client fled violence in Syria in 2019 and traveled through 12 other countries to reach France in January 2021.

Shorsh said he was trying to raise funds for his father, who is ill in Kirkuk, north Iraq. ‘I am a mechanic,’ he said as he sobbed in the dock. ‘I only repaired three engines.’

Through the entire investigation, and at the last court hearing, all three men admitted to their innocence and incompetence. The men claimed they were working for an unknown smuggling kingpin named Souca, but their whereabouts are not known.

Mail received confidential police records last week from the court, which severely undermined their claim to be small-time cronies.

They used smartphones to recruit clients, and police unearthed their phone records, using their own GPS tracking data to prove numerous trips from Paris to the coast

Police used their smartphones to find clients. They also used their GPS tracking data to verify numerous trips they made from Paris to the coast.

Police used their smartphones to find clients and then corroborated their trips with their GPS data.

Fiate’s iPhone was also full of names and photos of migrants, as well as details of prices paid and pictures of passports.

Officials were able to identify 327 individuals with the data of the UK Border Force with those who reached Britain successfully. There are also 200 others suspected to have crossed.

Police records also describe one recording that shows Fiate thumbing a pile of €200 banknotes on a table covered by luxury watches.

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