Afghan-born human traffikers who charged migrants up to £9,000 to reach the UK have been stripped of their British citizenship, The National can reveal.
Many of the migrants they smuggled into the UK were trafficked for forced labour, including children who were put to work in shops owned or controlled by one of the brothers.
Details of the undercover operation by the UK’s National Crime Agency into the people-trafficking operation was revealed during the men's unsuccessful appeal against having their citizenship removed.
The pair, who are uncle and nephew, had been in the UK for two decades and are currently in jail. They cannot been named for legal reasons and are referred to in court documents and D5 and D6.
The judge who sentenced then described the smuggling operation as a “sophisticated enterprise” that involved the use of drivers and others outside the UK.
The pair made “significant financial gain” from the smuggling and “each migrant would pay some £8,000 to £9,000 to be brought into the country”.
The NCA’s Deputy Director of Investigations Craig Turner told The National the pair were extensively involved in crime.
“We believe these individuals were members of a significant organised crime group involved in a range of serious criminality impacting upon the UK, including organised immigration crime, human trafficking, and money laundering,” he said.
“This assessment was made following a thorough investigation, and was upheld by the court judgment. The NCA is determined to use all the tools at our disposal to protect the public from serious and organised crime.”
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) was told that D5 first arrived in the UK from Afghanistan in 2001 and soon after began sending £500 a month back to his wife in Afghanistan despite not being legally able to work. He was joined by his nephew in 2004 and both were eventually granted British citizenship.
Also involved in their criminal organisation was D6's brother, who is known as D7. He arrived clandestinely in 2007 and was also given asylum after he claimed he faced persecution from the Taliban. He was given the right to remain in the UK permanently.
Undercover sting
Their criminal activities began to attract the attention of the police, who in 2018 raided their homes where they found £12,000 ($15,070) in cash and 30 mobile phones.
The NCA then began an undercover operation involving two officers codenamed George and Mark, posing as intercontinental lorry drivers who had fallen on hard times during the Covid pandemic.
The officers met the brothers in a shop owned by one of them in February 2020 and struck up a conversation in which they told them how Covid was affecting their work.
“D6 ushered George out of the shop and then asked George if he knew anyone who could bring people back into the UK,” according to the three judges who presided over the SIAC hearing.
George said that he did and they agreed to discuss it the following week and the two officers met the brothers at a petrol station in September during which D6 told George he wanted him to “smuggle people from mainland Europe into the UK”.
The people smuggler told the undercover officer it would be up to three people, three times a month on each run with a payment of £2,500 per person smuggled in.
Many of those who were smuggled in were children who had been trafficked for the purpose of forced labour and were forced to work for D5.
Stripped of citizenship
D5 and D6 left for Kabul but in the meantime the Home Office, at the request of the NCA, stripped them of their citizenship on the basis that they were part of an organised crime group involved in trafficking people for exploitation.
After being turned back from returning, they entered the UK clandestinely but were eventually arrested and brought to court.
D6 is serving a 10-year sentence for people smuggling and helping his brother enter Britain illegally. His uncle was sentenced to five years for entering illegally.
The brothers are currently in prison while D7 is believed to be in Finland.
