Gangmaster: Fahruddin, a Kurd,
snapped by a hidden camera at the migrants' camp in
Teteghem. Last week 21 migrants from Afghanistan and
Iran made the trip and earned Fahruddin nearly
50,000. Photo: Jamie Wiseman/dailymail.co.uk
The camp, at the village of Teteghem (ideally
located near the ferry ports of Dunkirk, Calais and
Belgium's Ostend) is a crucial cog in a huge
criminal operation smuggling migrants to Britain.
Photo: Jamie Wiseman/dailymail.co.uk
People leave the Teteghem camp. It has grown ever
since the so-called 'official' migrant camps, such
as the Red Cross-run centre in Sangatte, were closed
after pressure from successive British governments.
Photo: Jamie Wiseman/dailymail.co.uk
Wood Green in North London, where people smuggler
Fahruddun told Mail investigators to leave money
before he would smuggle them to Britain. Photo:
Jamie Wiseman/dailymail.co.uk
Last week 21 migrants from Afghanistan and Iran made
the trip and earned Fahruddin nearly 50,000. Photo:
Jamie Wiseman/dailymail.co.uk
Operation smuggles 5,000 migrants a year into
Britain from northern France . The Mr Big making a
mockery out of the so-called immigration crackdown:
Kurdish gangmaster will smuggle people into Britain
for £2,000
July 1, 2012
LONDON,— Standing on a patch of grass 46
miles across the Channel from the White Cliffs of
Dover, a man in a designer jacket emblazoned with
the words ‘No Fear’ is making a laughing stock of
our Government’s promises to stop illegal
immigration into Britain.
He calls himself ‘Fahruddin’ and is the Mr Big of a
multi-million-pound people-trafficking operation
that every year smuggles 5,000 migrants from all
over the world into Britain from northern France.
Ten days ago, three young Turks paid him a total of
£9,500 to be put on a lorry and taken by ferry to
Dover.
A few nights later, 21 migrants from Afghanistan and
Iran made the same trip and earned Fahruddin nearly
£50,000.
And then on Tuesday, he promised to smuggle a
29-year-old Turkish girl (along with two Chinese
couples) from Dunkirk to Kent if her relatives
deposited a large sum of cash with a fixer-colleague
at a small supermarket in Wood Green, North London.
He told the girl: ‘Don’t be scared. If you have the
money, I will get you there. Inshallah (God
willing). I can easily arrange it. I send people
every night. Those who have paid already go to the
front of the queue. I am very successful.’
His activities make a mockery of claims by David
Cameron that Britain’s immigration controls have got
tougher.
Fahruddin, an Iraqi-Kurd
who successfully claimed asylum in Britain in 2007,
in his early 20s, is making huge amounts of money as
a people-smuggler, operating out of a makeshift camp
on the outskirts of Dunkirk.
The camp, in a field beside a lake and equestrian
centre, is hidden by trees from traffic on the
motorway between Dunkirk and Calais.
It looks innocent enough: a group of wooden huts in
a clearing, several mobile lavatories provided by
the local health authorities and the embers of a
fire which is lit at night by migrants to keep warm.
Once a week, local charity workers visit to provide
food and clothing donated by the French public.
The camp, at the village of Teteghem (ideally
located near the ferry ports of Dunkirk, Calais and
Belgium’s Ostend) is a crucial cog in a huge
criminal operation smuggling migrants to Britain.
It has grown ever since the so-called ‘official’
migrant camps, such as the Red Cross-run centre in
Sangatte, were closed after pressure from successive
British governments.
A French police officer patrolling in his car near
the camp last week said: ‘There are other unofficial
camps up and down this side of the Channel, but this
one is the most popular. At least 20 people go to
England on lorries every night.
‘The men running the camp are Iraqis and Kurds who
are based in Britain. Many carry guns and are
prepared to use them. I’m afraid that even police
officers don’t enter the camp at night.’
During my investigations I was tipped off about the
existence of the camp by a man, whom we will call Mr
A, who settled in North London 20 years ago after
arriving legally from Turkey using his Cypriot
passport.
He wanted to expose how huge amounts of money are
being made by people such as Fahruddin and highlight
the poor conditions of the camps in northern France.
Twenty-five of his Turkish relatives have followed
him to Britain as stowaways on lorries, after paying
thousands of pounds to people-smuggling gangs. Mr A
volunteered to take me and a photographer to France
to show how clandestine migration continues to
flourish.
Using an undercover video camera and a secret sound
tape, Mr A and a 29-year-old Turkish girl — who he
knew and who used the pseudonym Rojda — walked into
the Teteghem camp.
Posing as a caring uncle with his niece, their cover
story was that he wanted her to travel illegally to
Britain to join relatives. Other migrants waiting to
be smuggled to England pointed them to Fahruddin
who,www.ekurd.net
breezily, explained how he could organise their
journey within days — for a large fee.
Mr A told him the girl’s father, who lived in
Turkey, would find the cash to pay for her journey.
They recorded their 45-minute conversation with
Fahruddin and secretly filmed him as he explained
the camp was a ‘distribution centre’ for migrants.
He boasted that the previous night he had put 45
migrants on lorries which were bound for Dover from
Calais and Dunkirk.
He said 21 had successfully reached Dover but 24 had
not managed to get onto the lorries. ‘They will try
again,’ he promised. ‘We do not give up.’
So how do these illegal people-trafficking
operations — of which there are many — work?
The system depends on the large communities of
migrants already settled in Britain and who are
willing to pay cash to get their relatives or
friends to join them.
‘They call England “Hope Land”,’ Fahruddin
explained. ‘None of the migrants here — whether they
come from Iran, or Iraq, from Afghanistan, China or
Turkey — want to settle in mainland Europe. They
only want to go to England.’
Fahruddin outlined in detail to Mr A and Rojda the
two ways he could get her across the Channel.
First, there was the cheaper Option A. This would
involve her father sending relatives in England
£2,000 in cash to hand to a middle-man contact of
Fahruddin’s at a
supermarket in Wood Green.
Once the cash was handed over, Fahruddin would be
told via mobile phone and he would then proceed to
put Rojda on a lorry. Under this option, the driver
would be totally unaware of his illicit human cargo.
Alternatively there is the more expensive Option B
which, he said, had a greater guarantee of success.
Fahruddin explained that Rojda’s family would have
to give £6,000 to the same Wood Green supermarket
contact.
She would then be put in a lorry whose driver would
be aware of the smuggling attempt since he would get
a share of the money if the passage was successful.
Both options would mean Rojda would be taken from
the camp in a car after midnight by one of
Fahruddin’s lieutenants to a lorry park near the
ferry ports where drivers sleep in their cabs or
leave their vehicles unattended while on a
meal-break.
Under Option A, a member of the gang would break
into the trailer — cutting the security wire
circling the outside — and check the labels on boxes
and pallets to ascertain the lorry was heading for
England.
Once sure, he would push Rojda in and seal the
trailer’s wire with superglue so the break-in would
not be detected by the driver.
Despite talk by politicians of beefed up border
checks, X-ray equipment and increased security at
ports, it was clear from talking to Fahruddin that
these measures are no deterrent to the smugglers and
thousands of foreigners are still getting through
illegally.
In Dover, the gang’s English-based accomplices would
be waiting for Rojda and would follow the lorry for
miles by car until it stopped and the driver got
out. Quickly, they would break in again, retrieve
Rojda and drive her to her relatives in London.
Under Option B, the driver would stop at a safe,
pre-arranged spot outside Dover, where he would be
met by Fahruddin’s gang members and Rojda would be
handed over.
During the discussions between Mr A, the girl and
Fahruddin, she was told not to worry about the
heat-seeking equipment used by border guards at
ports to detect migrants hiding in lorries.
The smugglers have devised a simple trick to escape
such checks. They wrap migrants in a cold, wet
blanket or put ice cubes in their clothes so the
warmth of the body is not detected by the equipment.
Having proved how easy it is to arrange to be
smuggled illegally into Britain, Rojda and her uncle
promised to ring Fahruddin after they had arranged
his fee.
Although they never took up his offer, our
investigation shows how simple it is for thousands
of foreigners to slip illegally into the UK every
year — and how plenty of criminals break the law and
get rich by helping them to do so.
I tracked down, for example, the three Turks who
paid Fahruddin £9,500 to get to England ten days
ago. They had reached his camp after a 2,000-mile
journey in a vegetable lorry from Gazientep, a
Turkish city near the Syrian border.
They are now part of the rapidly growing Turkish
community in Britain, which tops 500,000 in London
alone.
The trio included a
young husband and wife, aged 27 and 24, who are now
settling in Hackney, East London.
The husband, a carpenter, has already started work
on the black market at a relative’s supermarket
while his wife, who speaks only Kurdish, is still
recovering from the 40-day journey across Europe.
The third member of the trio — a 24-year-old woman —
is a friend of the couple. She is now living in a
relative’s flat in North London with her husband,
who was smuggled into Britain on a lorry from Calais
several years ago.
They told Mr A how they got to Britain. The money
was provided by a relative called Ibrahim, who
deposited the money to pay Fahruddin with another
North London supermarket contact.
The three then waited at the Teteghem camp for ten
days for Fahruddin to have proof of the payment and
then give the go-ahead.
At midnight, they were driven to the first petrol
station across the Belgian border, where a waiting
lorry was parked.
The driver was part of the scam. Wearing a black
cap, he got out of his cab and pushed the three into
the lorry trailer, which was full of textiles
destined for a clothes factory in Britain. He then
drove to Dunkirk and boarded a 2am ferry for
England.
A few hours later, as dawn was breaking, they
stepped out onto British soil to start a new life —
just like the hundreds of thousands before them and,
if wealthy criminal gang masters such as Fahruddin
get their way, thousands more in the future.
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