An Iranian criminal dubbed the “best smuggler” has been found guilty of organising small boat migrant crossings.
Amanj Hasan Zada, 34, was linked to three separate crossings from France in November and December last year.
But detectives believe he was involved in “many more” after advertising routes across the Channel on social media.
The National Crime Agency said each involved Kurdish migrants who had travelled through eastern Europe, into Germany, Belgium and then France.
Zada, who was known by those he smuggled as Amanj Zaman, advertised his services on social media, sometimes using videos of those he had successfully smuggled thanking him for his help. One such video showed a group of men on a boat to Italy praising him.
Another video, found on YouTube by the NCA and thought to have been recorded in Iraq in 2021, showed him at a party with musicians singing a song in Kurdish feting him as “the best smuggler”, saying “all the other smugglers have learned from him”, while he throws cash at them and fires a gun in the air in celebration.
NCA Branch Commander Martin Clarke said: “Amanj Hasan Zada ran a sophisticated people smuggling enterprise, using social media to advertise his services.
“While we have uncovered evidence directly linking him to three specific crossings, there is no doubt in my mind that he was likely to have been involved in many more.
“For him it was all about profit, and he had no issues with putting people in life threatening situations as long as he got paid.
“People smugglers like him risk lives, which is why we are determined to do all we can to stop them, wherever they operate.”
NCA detectives recorded conversations Zada had with other smugglers, where they discussed moving migrants across Europe, boat launch locations and successful Channel crossings.
The Iranian criminal was arrested in May, and investigators found links to social media accounts used to advertise
He’d also had direct contact with some of the migrants who’d come over on boats in 2023. Travel tickets for one of them were found on the handset.
Zada was charged with three counts of facilitating illegal immigration. The jury at Preston Crown Court found him guilty on all three charges, and he will be sentenced later this afternoon.
Richard Chambers, director of organised and emerging crime at Interpol warned the threat people smugglers pose to Britain is “growing” as they will try to exploit war and global crises.
Mr Chambers admitted he couldn’t say when the number of migrants crossing the Channel would begin to fall as the organised crime gangs are “developing fast”.
Growing tensions around the world “fuel a lot of this activity because the reality is, people seek a better place of safety”, he said, adding: “Organised crime groups exploit that. They exploit those vulnerabilities, and they don’t care about the consequences.”
A total of 3,197 people made the journey between October 24 and November 6, Home Office figures show.
This is the busiest 14-day period of crossings for the year so far, according to analysis.
Zada’s conviction comes after a seperate case earlier this week, when the ringleader of a “prolific” people smuggling gang thought to be behind 10,000 Channel crossings was jailed for 15 years in a French court, with 17 other members of the network also convicted.
Mirkhan Rasoul, a 26-year-old Iraqi-Kurd, was one of 18 defendants involved in a Europe-wide racket focused on making huge profits from the trade in human life.
Julie Carros, the lead prosecutor, described Rasoul as a “merchant of death”.
The gang controlled most of the Channel crossings from the French coast, bringing in equipment and clients from all over Europe.
Rasoul was so powerful in the criminal underworld that he was able to control the gang from his prison cell in France.
“We found three mobile telephones in his cell,” said Ms Carros, adding that intercepted phone calls proved Rasoul “frequently boasted about his work”.
“Day and night”, the phone interceptions in his cell showed that he was constantly organising crossings of the Channel, which proved his role as “network leader” but also his “feeling of omnipotence”, according to the prosecutor.
The group was prosecuted in the wake of a 2022 police operation across Europe which led to dozens of arrests in Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands, with more than 100 boats, 1,000 life jackets, engines and cash being seized.
