A UK-based people smuggler who helped exploit migrants as part of a £12 million illegal boat crossing operation has been jailed for 25 years.
Egyptian-born Ahmed Ebid, 42, helped organise the movement of nearly 3,800 migrants – including women and children – on just seven fishing boat crossings from North Africa to Italy between October 2022 and June 2023.
Some of them made their way to Britain, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
Secret recordings by the NCA found Ebid told an associate to kill and throw into the sea any migrants caught with phones, in a bid to avoid law enforcement.
He ran this operation from his home in Isleworth, south-west London.
The defendant, who is believed to be the first person convicted of organising boat crossings across the Mediterranean from the UK, was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday, having pleaded guilty to conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.
Judge Adam Hiddleston said that Ebid had a “significant managerial role within an organised crime group” and that his “primary motivation was to make money out of human trafficking”.
The judge told Ebid the “conspiracy that you were a part of generated millions of pounds” and that he must have been a “beneficiary” of “a significant amount”.
He added that the “truly staggering” amount of money came from the “hard-earned savings of desperate individuals”, who were “ruthlessly and cynically exploited” by Ebid and the crime group.
The people smuggler arrived in the UK in October 2022 after crossing the Channel in a small boat. In 2017, Ebid was sentenced in Italy to six years and two months in prison for drug smuggling.
Soon after he began arranging the operations in the Mediterranean.
He was working with people smuggling networks to organise boats, bringing over hundreds of migrants at a time on extremely dangerous vessels from Libya and advertising the crossings on Facebook.
Ebid sourced and provided boats and crews, provided technical advice during the crossings, helped house migrants, and dealt with any required paperwork, prosecutors said.
He helped with at least seven separate crossings which carried 3,781 people into Italian waters.
Each migrant had been charged an average of around £3,200, netting those involved £12.3 million, the NCA said.
One crossing on October 25 2022 saw more than 640 migrants rescued by the Italian authorities after they attempted to cross in a wooden boat, the NCA said.
In another, 265 migrants were rescued by the Italian coastguard from a 20-metre fishing boat found adrift in the Mediterranean in early December 2022 after it left Benghazi.
Two search and rescue operations occurred in April 2023 after distress calls to the coastguard and in each case more than 600 migrants were on board the boats, the NCA said.
Ebid was detained in Isleworth in June 2023 after the NCA, along with the Italian Guardia di Finanza and the Italian coastguard, linked him to the crossings.
The NCA’s Regional Head of Investigation Jacque Beer said: “Ebid was part of a crime network who preyed upon the desperation of migrants to ship them across the Mediterranean in death trap boats.
“The cruel nature of his business was demonstrated by the callous way he spoke of throwing migrants into the sea if they didn’t follow his rules.
“To him they were just a source of profit.”
Additional reporting by PA.
