Europe’s most wished individuals smuggler nicknamed arrested in Iraq

A human trafficker who masterminded an organised crime group that smuggled an estimated 10,000 migrants across the English Channel has been arrested after two years on the run.

Barzan Kamal Majeed, nicknamed ‘Scorpion’, was arrested in Iraq by the Kurdistan Region’s security forces (Asayish) on Monday, according to reports.

Majeed, a former Nottingham mechanic, had been missing since November 2022 when he failed to appear in court in Belgium for a sentencing hearing after having been convicted if trafficking offences.

The human trafficker was arrested following an investigation requested by Interpol, Asayish confirmed, identifying Majeed only by his initials and his nickname.

‘Following the launch of an investigation, Asayish forces, based on exchange of intel and upon the request of Interpol and as per a ruling by the judge, a great human trafficker and smuggler was arrested,’ Asayish told Rudaw Media Network today. 

His arrest comes just three days after he was featured in a BBC article in which an investigative team detailed how they tracked Majeed down and interviewed him face-to-face at a mall near the Iran border.

Majeed, in his interview with the BBC, admitted that between 2016 and 2019 he was one of two people running a people smuggling gang in Belgium and France. 

He couldn’t confirmed how many people he illegally transported across the English Channel, saying it was ‘maybe a thousand, maybe 10,000. I don’t know, I didn’t count.’

He did, however, deny being the boss of the operation, alleging that other gang members tried to implicate him to reduce their sentences.

‘A couple of people, when they get arrested, they say, ‘We’re working for him’. They want to get less sentence,’ he said. 

Majeed denied responsibility for the deaths of migrants who attempted the crossing, alleging he was just the ‘money man’ who ‘just took the money and booked places.’

‘I never put anybody in a boat and I never killed anybody,’ he said of the operation. ‘Nobody forced them. They wanted to, they were begging the smugglers: ‘Please, please do this for us.’ 

Smugglers charge an estimated £6,000 per person for a boat crossing, according to the broadcaster. Majeed’s alleged profits from the operation enabled him to purchase a villa in Marmaris, Turkey, local police claim.

Majeed, during the interview, reportedly denied having any current involvement in people smuggling. 

But Rob Lawrie, a former soldier who works with refugees and assisted in the BBC’s investigation, allegedly saw a reflection of Majeed’s phone screen in a mirror as he scrolled through. Mr Lawrie claims he saw lists of passport numbers of the device. 

The broadcaster’s investigation later revealed that smugglers would send the passport data to Iraqi officials and bribe them into issuing false visas so migrants could travel to Turkey.

Investigators from the National Crime Agency (NCA) had been working with officers in Belgium to track Majeed down and issued a warrant for his arrest in 2022.

The criminal moved to the UK in 2013, living in Nottingham, where he still has connections. He is believed to have smuggled himself into Britain in the back of a lorry when he was just 20 years old.

In 2015, he was deported to the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq after being convicted of drug and gun offences.

Majeed, who was on the run at the time, received a 10-year jail sentence for people smuggling at a court in Bruges in October 2022. He was also handed a 968,000 Euro (£849,000) fine.

His accomplice, Nzar Jabar Mohamad, was convicted and jailed at Hull Crown Court in October 2021. Mohamad was given a 10-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to an attempted people smuggling plot.

News of Majeed’s arrest comes as migrants have crossed the English Channel by boat for a 10th consecutive day as new arrivals were brought into Dover. 

There is no suggestion that Majeed was involved in these arrivals.

Border Force vessels arrived at the Kent port on Monday with people wearing life jackets disembarking.

More than 1,000 people have arrived in the UK by the Channel since May 4, according to Home Office figures.

The provisional total for the year so far is 9,455 as of Sunday.

Also on Monday, a judge at the High Court in Belfast ruled that a UK law allowing asylum-seekers to be deported to Rwanda should not apply to Northern Ireland on human rights grounds.

Political parties in the British-run province, which, like Scotland, has a separate legal system to England and Wales, said the judgement made the controversial Rwanda scheme unworkable.

But UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vowed to press ahead, saying it ‘changes nothing’ about the government’s plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda from as early as July.

‘Nothing will distract us from that or delivering to the timetable I set out,’ he said, announcing an appeal. We must start the flights to stop the boats.’

There have already been a spate of legal challenges to the UK government’s efforts to cut record levels of irregular migration, particularly from ‘small boats’ crossing the Channel from northern France.

In November last year, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the deportation plan was illegal under international law.

But Sunak pushed through legislation recently in parliament that deems Rwanda a safe country, allowing flights to go ahead and decision-makers to disregard aspects of human rights law.

In Belfast, judge Michael Humphreys upheld challenges to the legal powers allowing asylum-seekers to be detained and removed to the African country.

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission argued that the Illegal Migration Act breaches the UK’s domestic and international obligations under a deal signed by London and the European Union governing post-Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland.

That deal – the Windsor Framework – guarantees there would be no reduction of rights safeguarded by Northern Ireland’s 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of sectarian conflict, even if that meant that the British province’s laws differed from the rest of the UK.

Like Scotland, Northern Ireland has its own separate, but similar, legal system to that in England and Wales.

The judge found that several parts of the Illegal Migration Act reduced the rights of asylum-seekers in Northern Ireland under the terms of the peace accord.

The case brought against the UK also alleged there were violations of a series of rights protected by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), to which London remains a signatory.

Humphreys ruled that sections of the law that were subject to legal challenges should be ‘disapplied’ in the province.