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A people smuggler based in the UK who helped to “ruthlessly and cynically” exploit people seeking asylum as part of a £12m Mediterranean operation has been jailed for 25 years.
Ahmed Ebid, 42, helped bring nearly 3,800 people, including women and children, on just seven fishing boat crossings from north Africa to Italy between October 2022 and June 2023, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said. Some eventually made it to the UK.
Ebid, an Egyptian national, told an associate to kill and throw into the sea any people caught with phones, in an attempt to avoid law enforcement, the NCA said. While directing operations in Libya, he was living 2,500 miles away 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 to 25 years, having pleaded guilty to conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.
Judge Hiddleston said Ebid had a “significant managerial role within an organised crime group” and 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”. 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, Hiddleston said.
Ebid arrived in the UK in October 2022 after crossing the Channel in a small boat, having been sentenced in Italy in 2017 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 people 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.
In one conversation with an associate, recorded via a listening device planted by NCA officers, he said migrants were not to carry phones with them on his boats.
He said: “Tell them guys anyone caught with a phone will be killed, threw in the sea.”
On one crossing, on 25 October 2022, more than 640 people were rescued by the Italian authorities after they attempted to cross in a wooden boat, the NCA said. It was taken into port in Sicily and two bodies were recovered.
In another, 265 people 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 took place in April 2023 after distress calls to the coastguard, and in each case more than 600 people were onboard the boats, the NCA said.
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Ebid helped with at least seven crossings, which carried 3,781 people into Italian waters. Each migrant had been charged an average of about £3,200, netting those involved £12.3m, the NCA said.
Ebid was detained in Isleworth in June 2023 after the NCA, along with the Italian Guardia di Finanza police force and coastguard, linked him to the crossings.
On a phone seized from him, investigators found pictures of boats, conversations about the possible purchase of vessels, videos of migrants making the journey and screenshots of money transfers.
Tim Burton, a specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Ahmed Ebid played a leading role in a sophisticated operation, which breached immigration laws and endangered lives, for his own and others’ financial gain.
“Vulnerable people were transported on long sea journeys in ill-equipped fishing vessels completely unsuitable for carrying the large number of passengers who were onboard.
“His repeated involvement in helping to facilitate these dangerous crossings showed a complete disregard for the safety of thousands of people, whose lives were put at serious risk.”
Jacque Beer of the NCA 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.
“He was based in the UK but organising crossings from north Africa. A proportion of those he moved to Italy would also have ended up in northern Europe, attempting to cross the Channel to the UK.”
