Two Afghan-born brothers who ran a people-smuggling operation in which migrants were charged up to £9,000 have been stripped of their UK 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 have been in the UK for two decades, are currently in jail.
The judge who sentenced the brothers, who cannot be named, 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 names of the two brothers and their uncle, who has been barred from returning to the UK, cannot be revealed for legal reasons –the two are referred to as D5 and D5 and their relative as D7.
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 brother in 2004 and both were eventually granted British citizenship.
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
The brothers 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 brother was sentenced to five years for entering illegally.
The brothers are currently in prison while their uncle is believed to be in Finland.
