People smuggling gang from the “Merchants of Death” channel jailed in France

Eighteen members of a people smuggling gang accused of organizing thousands of small boat crossings across the English Channel have been jailed in France.

The group – described by prosecutors as the “Merchants of Death” – was mainly made up of Iraqi Kurds and was prosecuted after a Europe-wide operation in 2022 Arrests in Great Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Mirkhan Rasoul, the gang’s leader, received the longest sentence among those convicted by a Lille court on Tuesday.

Other defendants included a woman and an Iranian man who was arrested in the UK and subsequently extradited to France.

For several years, the gang controlled most small boat crossings from northern France.

Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said the gang, believed to be behind up to 10,000 Channel crossings, was “among the most prolific” it had ever encountered.

More than 100 boats, 1,000 life jackets, engines and cash were confiscated as part of the international operation.

Rasoul, 26, had already been there convicted of previous smuggling charges and served a separate eight-year sentence for attempted murder

He was accused of running the “tentacle-like” criminal smuggling operation from his French prison cell.

The court followed the prosecutor’s recommendation and imposed the longest sentence on Rasoul, French media reported.

According to local reports, he was also fined €200,000 (£167,745).

Lilles prosecutor Carole Etienne wrote on X that the court had imposed fines totaling 1.445 million euros (£1.2 million).

The court heard how the gang overloaded the small boats, sometimes forcing on board up to 15 times more people than they were intended to carry.

In a statement, NCA deputy director Craig Turner said the gang’s sole motive was profit and they did not care about the fate of the migrants they sent out to sea in completely unsuitable and dangerous boats.

The complex process involved multiple European nations and police forces and resulted in 67 tons of paperwork.