The trial, held in the northern city of Lille near France’s border with Belgium, nearly 100 kilometers from the English Channel, concluded with a 15-year prison term for Mirkhan Rasoul, a 26-year-old Iraqi national accused of leading the network, French newspaper Le Monde reported.
Prison sentences for the other 17 defendants, which included one woman, ranged from 1-12 years, according to the report, adding that authorities described the defendants as “a vast network of people smuggling in the Channel, mainly Iraqi-Kurdish.”
The investigation “had established that this network had largely controlled migrant crossings to England from the north of France between 2020 and 2022,” according to Le Monde, with the court following the prosecutor’s recommendation in issuing the heaviest sentence to Rasoul.
Public Prosecutor Carole Etienne announced, “Major operation against migrant smuggling in the English Channel: 39 arrests,” in a post on X. She added that in addition to the prison terms, fines totaled 1,445,000 Euros.
Tens of thousands of people from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region take on perilous routes towards Europe on a yearly basis in hopes of escaping endless crises, including the lack of employment, political instability, and corruption.
Diyari Kamaran, 25, from Darbandikhan in Sulaimani province was one of eight people who died after a migrant boat carrying nearly 60 people capsized on September 15 while trying to cross the English Channel. His father, Kamarn Mohammed, told Rudaw that 90 migrants were crowded on a boat that was smaller than they had been told and it began taking on water after 20 minutes into the journey.
In June, twin shipwrecks off the coasts of Italy’s Roccella Ionica and Lampedusa left more than 70 migrants dead and missing. Most of the passengers were Kurds from the Kurdistan Region and Iran’s western Kurdish areas, as well as people from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and Syria.
Around 20,000 people from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region migrated out of the country in 2023, with at least nine of them losing their lives on the dangerous and illegal smuggling routes, according to the Summit (Lutka) Foundation for Refugees and Displaced Affairs.
In 2021, the Kurdistan Region witnessed an exodus of its youth, with tens of thousands leaving, bound for Europe in the quest for a better life. A number of these migrants met their unfortunate end on the freezing Belarus-Poland border and others drowned at sea.
