A French court has jailed four Afghans and handed lesser sentences to five others for illegally smuggling migrants across the Channel to Britain on dinghies in 2021.
\nLondon and Paris are clamping down on illicit boat crossings into the United Kingdom on the perilous route, which has been used by growing numbers of people since 2018.
\nThe court tried nine Afghans aged 21 to 39 for taking part in four operations to smuggle 53 mainly Vietnamese and Afghan migrants across the Channel between January and March 2021.
\nAll passengers were picked up in either British or French waters.
\nThe Paris court on Wednesday jailed a 30-year-old for six years and fined him 30,000 euros ($32,000) for orchestrating the crossings, charges he denied throughout the trial.
\nIt ordered that he should be expelled from France once he has served his time.
\nIt sentenced three other defendants to five years in jail and a 25,000-euro fine each, also ordering their deportation afterwards. One of them had six months of his jail term suspended.
\nFive other Afghans were handed lesser sentences and will not go to prison.
\nThe prosecutor had requested slightly harsher sentences, alleging the defendants had \u201cknowingly endangered the lives of others\u201d.
\nThe defence stressed that the defendants had themselves been forced to flee a war-torn country ruled by the extremist Taliban and were living in poverty.
\nTheir lawyer, Alexia Gavini, alleged that Britain had \u201cconsiderably hardened its immigration policy, leading to an exponential rise in crossings\u201d.
\nAccording to a statement read out during the trial, one of the defendants told investigators that, at one dinghy launch, a passenger designated as the boat\u2019s captain was allowed to travel for free, while a second tasked with navigation paid half price.
\nAll the rest handed over between 1,500 and 4,000 euros each, the charge sheet showed.
\nAccording to the British government, more than 45,000 migrants arrived on the shores of southeast England on small boats in 2022.
\nThe previous year, more than 28,000 people were detected arriving.
\nIn November 2021, at least 27 people, including a seven-year-old, drowned when their dinghy deflated during the journey.
\nIn December 2019, a French court jailed two smugglers \u2013 an Afghan and a Dutchman of Guinean origin \u2013 for six and three years respectively after a 31-year-old Iranian woman drowned during a crossing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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