Lille (France) (AFP) - A French court on Tuesday issued prison terms of up to 15 years to 18 people, mainly Iraqi Kurds, convicted of forming a vast gang to smuggle migrants aboard small boats across the Channel to England.

The investigation found that this particular network, between 2020 and 2022, had great control over migrant crossings from France to England, which have cost dozens of lives in the last years.

The stiffest sentence of 15 years in prison was given to Iraqi national Mirkhan Rasoul, 26, who was accused of being the leader of the network and coordinating its actions from his French prison cell after previous convictions.

The sentences issued by the court in the northern city of Lille for the other 17 accused, who included one woman, ranged from one to 12 years in jail.

Wearing a black quilted gilet and sporting a dark beard, Rasoul listened calmly in the glass defendants’ box to his sentence being pronounced by the judge.

Already convicted twice for aiding illegal residence in France, he had been expelled from the hearing on the third day of the trial in October after threatening interpreters.

Arrest warrants have been issued for nine of the other defendants who were convicted in absentia.

“The defendants are not volunteers helping their fellow humans but merchants of death,” the prosecutor said during the trial, describing how boats were loaded with passengers “up to 15 times their theoretical capacity”.

More than 50 searches led to the seizure of 1,200 life jackets, nearly 150 inflatable boats and 50 boat engines, during operations carried out jointly by France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Britain, coordinated by the Europol and Eurojust agencies.

- ‘Sole motive was profit’ -

Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said in a statement that one of the men convicted had been arrested by British authorities and extradited to France for the trial.

Kaiwan Poore, 40, was detained by British officers at Manchester Airport as he attempted to board a flight to Turkey in July 2022. He was given a five-year sentence by the Lille court.

The NCA said that each single crossing of migrants from France to England stood to net the criminal network around 100,000 euros ($109,000) in profit.

British and French authorities are seeking to improve cooperation to stop the people-smuggling networks, after several years where post-Brexit tensions appeared to hamper attempts to tackle the problem.

The NCA said a number of those convicted in the trial had been identified thanks to the Joint Intelligence Cell, a specialist British-French unit based in northern France set up to target people smugglers.

“Their sole motive was profit, and they didn’t care about the fate of migrants they were putting to sea in wholly inappropriate and dangerous boats,” said NCA Deputy Director Craig Turner.

He said the network was “among the most prolific we have come across” in terms of the number of crossings.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to “smash the gangs” behind the trade and said people smuggling should be put on a par with global terrorism.

According to the latest provisional statistics, nearly 32,000 undocumented migrants arrived in Britain after crossing the Channel in small boats this year.

At least 60 people have died trying to make the crossing.