News / Society

23 arrested in France and Holland accused of transporting '10,000 Kurds' to UK

Thursday, 23 January 2020 7:42 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 24 January 2020 4:22 AM ]

Border police check lorries for hidden passengers

French and Dutch police have arrested 23 persons suspected of helping to smuggle about 10,000 Kurdish migrants into the UK.

The Law enforcement agency, Eurojust, European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, believes the alleged smugglers would pick up migrants from car parks in France, they would then be conveyed to the UK using refrigerated lorries and small rubber dinghies.

The cost of this ardous voyage could be as much as €7,000 per ‘client’, which is a considerable amount of money, especially for those fleeing conflict zones, repressive regimes, religious or ethnic persecution.

Eurojust said 19 of the suspects were detained in France and four in the Netherlands.

Eurojust set up an international investigation team after French authorities detected suspects using vehicles with Dutch vehicle registration plates.

Migrants were picked up from various car parks in France before being taken to the UK, Eurojust said.

The payments made by the migrants have been linked to an illegal hawala banking system in the Netherlands. Hawala is an informal trust based system of money transfer, commonly used in Middle Eastern countries, where no money actually crosses international borders.

Using European Arrest Warrants the 23 suspects were arrested by Eurojust officers, while five locations were searched.

The criminal network is alleged to have accrued total profits of about €70m (£59.1m).

Maybe if the Europeans and their allies desisted from invading other countries they would not be faced with such disconcerting revelations of illegal immigration.

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