Two Afghans and a Briton were sentenced on Monday to prison terms by the correctional court of Boulogne-sur-Mer, in the Pas-de-Calais, for organizing migrations of migrants to England aboard boats of Fortune.
The migrants had been abandoned in the open sea. On the night of 21 to 22 November, alerted by a distress call, the authorities had rescued 11 people in the English Channel who were hypothermic aboard an inflatable boat, without a motor. adrift. The migrants explained that they were placed in the small inflatable boat and towed by another boat. After half an hour, the people in the first boat "cut the rope", abandoning them at sea with four oars and seven lifejackets.
Thanks in part to telephone tapping, the investigation identified Jahid J. and Najeebullah R., Afghans aged 30 and 26, and Mustafa E., a British born in Kabul in 1987. Despite their differing versions, the prosecutor's office retained the aggravating circumstance of "organized gang".
"These are particularly serious facts because the crossing by the sea is extremely dangerous, after 23 attempts in 2016 and 12 in 2017, there is an explosion of attempts in 2018, with 71 passages or attempts to cross, or 504 migrants", recalled the prosecutor Camille Gourlin.
The three convicts are banned from French territory for 10 years. The court finally handed down a three-year prison sentence against Najeebullah R., considered the head of the network. Jahid J. was sentenced to two and a half years and Mustafa E. to two years in prison. All three are also banned from French territory for 10 years.
Since the beginning of 2019, the trend is confirmed with already 20 crossings of 90 migrants to Great Britain. Seven of them succeeded.