French court convicts 18 in a major trial that casts light on the deadly migrant-smuggling trade

A group of Kurdish migrants from Iran and Iraq who failed in their attempt to reach the United Kingdom by boat walk back to the town of Ambleteuse, northern France, on Sunday, May 19, 2024, after being discovered by the police. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)

LILLE, France — A French court found 18 people guilty Tuesday in a major migrant-smuggling trial that shed light on the lucrative but often deadly clandestine business of transporting people on flimsy boats across the perilous sea from France to the U.K.

The defendants were swept up in a pan-European police operation in 2022 that led to dozens of arrests and the seizure of boats, life jackets, outboard engines, paddles, and cash.

The court in Lille, northern France, sentenced one of the ringleaders, from Iraq, to 15 years in prison and a fine of 200,000 euros (US$218,000). Other sentences ranged from two years to 10 years in prison.

“These sentences are obviously very severe,” said Kamel Abbas, a lawyer who represented one of the defendants already imprisoned in France. “That’s a testimony of the scale of the case, and of the intention to severely punish the smugglers.”

Most of the defendants were not in court for the verdicts and sentencing. Some attended the trial remotely from various prisons in northern France, while others are not in custody. Fourteen of the 18 defendants were from Iraq, with the others from Iran, Poland, France and the Netherlands.

The trial comes in what has been a particularly deadly year for attempted crossings of the English Channel, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

More than 31,000 migrants have made the perilous Channel crossing so far this year, more than in all of 2023, though fewer than in 2022. At least 56 people have perished in the attempts this year, according to French officials, making 2024 the deadliest since the crossings began surging in 2018.

The route, despite French and British efforts to stop it, remains a major smuggling corridor for people fleeing conflict or poverty. Migrants favor the U.K. for reasons of language, family ties, or perceived easier access to asylum and work.

Europe’s increasingly strict asylum rules, growing xenophobia and hostile treatment of migrants are also pushing many migrants north.

On Monday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for international cooperation against smuggling gangs, likening the issue to a global security threat on par with terrorism.

Starmer told a conference of international police organization Interpol that “people-smuggling should be viewed as a global security threat similar to terrorism.” He said intelligence and law-enforcement agencies should try to “stop smuggling gangs before they act” in the same way they do in counterterrorism operations.

AP journalists John Leicester in Paris and Jill Lawless in London contributed.