Three arrested in Iraq over alleged UK people smuggling links
Three people have been arrested in Iraq’s Kurdistan region over their alleged involvement in a global people-smuggling network that moves migrants from the region to the UK and Europe.
The detained men are said to be part of the same network as British people smuggler Amanj Hasan Zada. He was jailed last year for helping a boat cross the English Channel.
The National Crime Agency said all three men have been detained and will be prosecuted by authorities in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) for human trafficking offences.
In a first of its kind operation, National Crime Agency officers were deployed to assist the Council and Security Service in the region in carrying out arrests.
One of the detainees, a 38-year-old man, is accused of working with a smuggling network that uses more than a dozen yachts to coordinate the transport of migrants to Greece or Italy.
The NCA said each ship would carry 60 or 70 people and then transfer them to Northern Europe or the UK.
The second man, a Hawala banker in his 40s, is accused of handling financial transactions on behalf of Zada. Hawala is an alternative and often informal organized remittance system.
A third man in his 30s was detained on charges of acting as an intermediary for the group, which aggregates migrants for movement through networks previously linked to Zada.
The three men, all from the city of Sulaymaniyah, were arrested between January 8 and 12.
Zada, from Preston, Lancashire, has been linked to three different crossings from France in 2023 involving Kurdish migrants traveling through Eastern Europe.
The 34-year-old Iranian citizen was convicted in November of three counts of facilitating illegal immigration and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
According to the NCA, Zada used social media to promote his services, sometimes posting videos of his successful smuggling to thank him for his help.
Another video posted on YouTube, believed to have been recorded in Iraq in 2021, shows Zada at a party where Kurdish musicians sang a song in which he was hailed as “the best smuggler.”
NCA branch commander Martin Clarke, who is deployed to KRI, said the smuggling gang “risked the lives of those they were transporting, lying to them through social media channels and claiming the journey was 100% safe”.
He added: “In 2024, more than 70 people died trying to cross the English Channel in small boats, so this trade must stop.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the NCA investigation was an example of the government “saying it will disrupt the gangs behind this evil trade and disrupt its supply chains”.
This operation was assisted by the following organizations UK recently struck deal with Iraq on law enforcement co-operation and border securityMs. Cooper added.
