Three men suspected of being part of a global people-smuggling network moving migrants from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) into the UK and Europe have been arrested following a ground-breaking operation involving the National Crime Agency, Kurdistan Region Security Council and Kurdistan Region Security Agency.
The group detained were linked to the same network as Amanj Hassan Zada, a UK-based facilitator convicted and jailed for 17 years in November 2024 following an NCA investigation.
Zada, who lived in Preston at the time of his arrest and was known by those he smuggled as Amanj Zaman, advertised his services on social media, sometimes using videos of those he had successfully smuggled, thanking him for his help. One such video showed a group of men on a boat to Italy praising him.
Another video, posted on YouTube and thought to have been recorded in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in 2021, showed him at a party with musicians singing a song in Kurdish, feting him as “the best smuggler”, saying “all the other smugglers have learned from him”, while he threw cash at them and fired a gun in the air in celebration.
One of those arrested, a 38-year-old male from Sulaymaniyah, is accused of working with the network to coordinate the movements of more than a dozen yachts transporting migrants into Greece or Italy.
Each boat would contain 60 or 70 people, who would then be moved on to northern Europe or the UK.
