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Kuwaiti Leader of Gang That Smuggled 3,000 Illegal Migrants Into Britain Fights Extradition From UK to Belgium

Living on benefits in Britain, this is the alleged organiser of a gang that smuggled 3,000 migrants to the UK. Ahmed Al Jabir is accused of arranging scores of dangerous small boat Channel crossings with an accomplice who ran the operation from a Home Office asylum hotel.

But Al Jabir is fighting extradition to Belgium on the basis that he should not be forced to sleep on a mattress on the floor in a crowded Bruges prison cell. The jobless Kuwaiti-born immigrant is pictured here strolling in the sunshine close to his taxpayer-funded London home which he shares with his wife and four children, who receive £3,370 a month in benefits.

He is appealing against his extradition with further claims he could face ‘racist insults’ from prison staff in Belgium.  But now it can be revealed that he is said to be part of a major people-smuggling network coordinated by alleged accomplice Muthanna Al Amarah, who was living in a Home Office-funded hotel for asylum seekers in St Albans, Hertfordshire. 

According to court documents, Al Jabir was allegedly a key organiser of the small boats operation while Al Amarah is said to have compiled the list of migrants on each trip and collected payments. The international gang, which also has tentacles in France, is said to have smuggled 3,000 migrants across the Channel over two years.

But the operation unravelled following a near-fatal crossing involving 24 migrants from Iraq, Iran, Algeria and Afghanistan. They were rescued from an overcrowded boat drifting into a wind farm off the coast near Zeebrugge in Belgium in October 2021.

The vessel had set off two days earlier for Britain, but the outboard motor failed. Several passengers were airlifted to hospital with hypothermia. Rescuers said they could have died if they had been left on the water any longer. Authorities in Belgium launched an investigation and put out a European Arrest Warrant for Al Jabir after obtaining his phone number from three of those rescued.

Al Jabir, who came to the UK in 2015 and applied for British citizenship six months ago, was found living in a taxpayer-funded £500,000 home in Willesden, north-west London. Following his arrest in November, he appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where District Judge Daniel Sternberg ordered his extradition.

Al Jabir is now appealing the decision along with Iraqi-born asylum seeker Al Amarah, whose attempts to stay were also rejected by the court. Both men face up to 15 years in jail if convicted of conspiring to facilitate unlawful immigration, which they deny.

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Source
Daily Mail
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