{"id":39145,"date":"2024-05-10T06:20:56","date_gmt":"2024-05-10T06:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/?p=39145"},"modified":"2024-05-10T06:21:00","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T06:21:00","slug":"how-we-found-europes-most-wanted-migrant-smuggler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/?p=39145","title":{"rendered":"How we found Europe\u2019s most wanted migrant-smuggler"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">BBC:   <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am sitting in a shopping mall in Iraq, face-to-face with one of Europe\u2019s most notorious people-smugglers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His name is Barzan Majeed, and he is wanted by police forces in several countries, including the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over the course of our conversation &#8211; both here and the next day at his office &#8211; he says he does not know how many migrants he has transported across the English Channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMaybe a thousand, maybe 10,000. I don\u2019t know, I didn\u2019t count.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The meeting is the culmination of what had seemed like an impossible task a few months earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Together with Rob Lawrie, a former soldier who works with refugees, I had set out to find and question the man known as Scorpion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For several years, he and his gang controlled much of the people-smuggling trade &#8211; in boats and lorries &#8211; across the English Channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More than 70 migrants have died making crossing by boat since 2018 &#8211; last month, five people were killed off the French coast, including a seven-year-old girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/f53c\/live\/1da88fd0-0d22-11ef-bee9-6125e244a4cd.jpg.webp\" alt=\"EPA About 60 migrants cross the English Channel on a small boat, on 06 March 2024. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Tens of thousands of migrants try to cross the English Channel every year<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is a dangerous journey, but for the smugglers it can be very lucrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They can charge \u00a36,000 per person for a boat crossing &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-53699511#:~:text=In%202023%20as%20a%20whole,the%20UK%20by%20this%20route.\">and with nearly 30,000 people attempting it in 2023<\/a>, the potential for profit is obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our interest in Scorpion had begun with a little girl we met in one of the migrant camps near Calais, in northern France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She had almost died trying to cross the English Channel in an inflatable dinghy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The dinghy was not seaworthy &#8211; it was cheap, bought second-hand in Belgium &#8211; and the 19 people on board had no lifejackets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Who would send people out to sea like this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When police in the UK pick up illegal migrants, they take and inspect their mobile phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From 2016 onwards, the same number kept cropping up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BBC: I am sitting in a shopping mall in Iraq, face-to-face with one of Europe\u2019s most notorious people-smugglers. His name is Barzan Majeed, and he is wanted by police forces in several countries, including the UK. Over the course of our conversation &#8211; both here and the next day at his office &#8211; he says he does not know how many migrants he has transported across the English Channel. \u201cMaybe a thousand, maybe 10,000. I don\u2019t know, I didn\u2019t count.\u201d The meeting is the culmination of what had seemed like an impossible task a few months earlier. Together with Rob&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39146,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39147,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39145\/revisions\/39147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}