A 47-year-old man from Morocco, Jamal Elkhadir, along with his accomplice, 32-year-old Houcine Argoub from Bromley, southeast London, has been imprisoned for attempting to smuggle 39 asylum seekers concealed within the back of a refrigerated lorry out of the UK, according to the Daily Mail.
Both men pleaded guilty to assisting unlawful immigration at Canterbury Crown Court on 13 March. Elkhadir was sentenced to six years and nine months, while Argoub was sentenced to five years and three months.
For context, the perpetrators were arrested at Dover docks in Kent while the Moroccan guy was driving the lorry.
NCA officers observed the two perpetrators meeting in a lay-by near Sandwich, Kent, in September 2023. Argoub parked his van close to Elkhadir’s Moroccan-registered HGV lorry.
Several people were seen exiting the van and climbing into the back of the lorry before it drove off toward Dover, where the officers apprehended them.
Upon inspection by UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) officers, it was revealed that 39 migrants from Morocco and Algeria, including a family with a six-year-old son and a teenage girl, were concealed inside.
The migrants could not open the doors from the inside, so they depended on others if they needed to get out, according to the British news outlet Metro.
The Moroccan guy was arrested at the docks on suspicion of assisting unlawful migration, while his accomplice was arrested at his residence back in November 2023.
The former initially claimed innocence, stating that “he was delivering cherry tomatoes to three businesses in the UK” and had left the lorry unlocked, suggesting the migrants could have jumped in when he wasn’t looking. However, he later changed his story and said that he “was threatened at gunpoint to bring them to France.”
John Turner, the manager of the UK’s NCA operations, denounced their actions and emphasized, “Their only concerns were about the money they were making and how they could avoid detection, not for the safety of those hiding in the back of the HGV.”
Turner emphasized the NCA’s commitment to thwarting networks of people smugglers and defending border security in France and the UK.
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