People smugglers charged migrants £7,000 each to bring them to UK in lorries

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A man from east London has been convicted of conspiring to smuggle migrants into the UK in lorries after tell-all messages were found on his co-conspirator’s phone.

Najib Khan, 38, from Ilford, was identified as being part of an organised crime group which brought migrants into the country at a cost of £7,000 per person.

He was caught after his co-conspirator, Waqas Ikram, 40, from Dagenham, was arrested in March 2021 for people-smuggling offences.

Ikram’s iPhone was seized following his arrest, and the National Crime Agency (NCA) found messages detailing his and Khan’s involvement in a people-smuggling network.

The evidence showed how the pair managed to smuggle five migrants into Harwich in May 2019, and made two other attempts which were foiled by border agents.

Ikram pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiring to facilitate illegal immigration, but Khan went to trial. Reading Crown Court found him guilty on all three accounts on Friday 28 July.

NCA branch commander Andy Noyes said: “Ikram and Khan had no regard for the safety and security of those they were transporting, they were only interested in making money from them.

“In at least one case it was only the fact that the migrants were discovered by border agents that prevented them from being left in what could have been an incredibly dangerous, and potentially fatal, situation.”

One of the two failed attempts to smuggle migrants into the UK was in May 2019, when 15 Vietnamese and one Afghan migrant were found in a lorry at the Hook of Holland as it prepared to board a ferry to Harwich.

Recorded conversations between Khan and Ikram showed they were using GPS trackers to follow lorries that they had arranged to be broken into without drivers’ knowledge to stow migrants. One of the trackers was found at Khan’s house when he was arrested.

Ikram was detained in 2021 when he was caught attempting to break into an HGV to put migrants inside.

The organised crime group which involved the pair was headed by Muhammad Mokter Hossain, 54, who was jailed for 10-and-a-half years following an NCA investigation using surveillance and undercover tactics.

He was responsible for the smuggling of hundreds of people both into and out of the UK.

In 2020, Khan and Ikram purchased a rigid-hull inflatable boat to smuggle migrants, and Ikram attended a course for piloting powerboats that June.

The following July, the pair came across Border Force off the coast of Suffolk in their inflatable boat. They told officers they were scouting for scuba-diving sites, and returned to Walton-on-the-Naze, a seaside town on the North Sea coast.

Both Ikram and Khan will be sentenced on 30 September.