A Channel migrant who smuggled 4,000 asylum seekers into Europe whilst living on benefits in a council home has been jailed for 25 years.
Ahmed Ebid, 42, ran a £12million operation transporting 3,800 people from Libya to Europe.
Prosecutors said the Egyptian “sourced and provided” boats and crews, provided “technical advice” during the crossings, housed migrants before they departed and handled paperwork.
Ebid had been claiming benefits and ran the smuggling operation from his council flat in Isleworth, southwest London, after arriving on a small boat in 2022.
It is the first conviction of a criminal based in the UK for smuggling migrants across the Mediterranean.
The smuggler, known as “Captain Ahmed” on Facebook, was eventually caught after investigators linked his London-based mobile number to satellite phones that were used to make distress calls from the boats to the Italian coastguard.
Ebid even threatened to throw migrants in the sea in a desperate bid to avoid capture.
Detectives found pictures of boats, conversations about purchasing vessels, videos of migrants making the journey and screenshots of money transfers when they arrested the smuggler.
Jacque Beer, National Crime Agency (NCA) Regional Head of Investigation, said: “Ebid was part of a crime network who preyed upon the desperation of migrants to ship them across the Mediterranean in death trap boats.
“The cruel nature of his business was demonstrated by the callous way he spoke of throwing migrants into the sea if they didn’t follow his rules. To him they were just a source of profit.
“He was based in the UK but organising crossings from north Africa. A proportion of those he moved to Italy would also have ended up in northern Europe, attempting to cross the Channel to the UK.”
Ebid crossed the Channel on a small boat in October 2022 and was able to claim asylum despite being sentenced to six years and two months for drug-smuggling in Italy in 2017.
Soon afterwards, he began arranging the operations in the Mediterranean.
He was working with people-smuggling networks to organise boats, bringing over hundreds of migrants on dangerously overloaded fishing boats from Libya.
Ebid advertised the crossings on Facebook.
More than 640 migrants were rescued by the Italian authorities on one crossing – in a wooden boat – in October 2022.
It was taken into port in Sicily and two bodies were recovered.
In another, 265 migrants were rescued by the Italian coastguard from a 20m (66ft) fishing boat found adrift in the Mediterranean in early December 2022 after it left Benghazi.
Search and rescue vessels were scrambled in April 2023 after panicked migrants called for help. More than 600 people were rescued in two separate operations.
Ebid masterminded at least seven separate crossings which carried 3,781 people into Italian waters.
Each migrant had been charged an average of around £3,200, netting those involved £12.3 million, the NCA said.
Judge Adam Hiddleston said Ebid had a “significant managerial role within an organised crime group” and that his “primary motivation was to make money out of human trafficking”.
He told Ebid: “The treatment of the migrants on your orders and in your name was horrifying. They were simply a commodity to you.
“You talked of them in terms of units, not as people, referring to them as ‘cartons’.
“The important thing to you was that each paid up the exorbitant fare that was charged for their crossing and that nobody did anything to compromise your operation – such as by carrying a mobile phone.
“As we know, if they did, you were prepared to instruct others to threaten them with death. You demonstrated no empathy or care whatsoever for these desperate and vulnerable men, women and children.”
Specialist Prosecutor Tim Burton said: “Ahmed Ebid played a leading role in a sophisticated operation, which breached immigration laws and endangered lives, for his own and others’ financial gain.
“Vulnerable people were transported on long sea journeys in ill-equipped fishing vessels completely unsuitable for carrying the large number of passengers who were on board. His repeated involvement in helping to facilitate these dangerous crossings showed a complete disregard for the safety of thousands of people, whose lives were put at serious risk.”