French people smuggler jailed after being caught at Portsmouth International Port with three Iraqi Kurds in a caravan
A MAN who was caught smuggling three Kurdish Iraqis into Portsmouth port in a caravan has been jailed for 14 months.
French national Jean Dufour, 31,
borrowed his parents’ silver Citroen C4 and hired a caravan after being
offered 8,000 Euros by a Kurdish refugee in France to transport the men
into Britain.
But he
was caught as soon as he arrived in Portsmouth on January 13 at 7pm by
Border Force officers who found the men in squalid conditions.
Dufour,
whose parents wept at Portsmouth Crown Court as he was jailed,
immediately confessed to people smuggling - and even said had been
prepared to do it again.
The defendant had accepted the
cash offer while a cash-strapped apprentice at Michelin but when he won a
full contract still carried on with the agreement through a sense of
‘obligation,’ his barrister Daniel Reilly said.
The
court heard how a refugee in France had asked for Dufour’s help in
smuggling people for a year before he finally made the trip.
Even
though he no longer needed the money he felt he would let the man down
if he did not carry out the operation,’ Mr Reilly said.
He
added: ‘He explains now he sees the stupidity of the decision he made
and also his real naivety as to the seriousness of the situation he was
putting himself in.’
Recorder
Noel Casey said the crime fell to the lower end of criminality in
people smuggling and jailed Dufour, who has no previous, for 14 months
after he admitted facilitating illegal immigration.
‘I
accept what you have done is out of character but nevertheless the
sentence imposed must be one of immediate custody,’ the judge said.
In
a statement, Ben Youlden, Border Force assistant director, said: ‘It
was clear from the unsanitary conditions inside the caravan that the men
had been hidden inside for some time.’
Deputy
director Dave Fairclough, from Immigration Enforcement’s Criminal and
Financial Investigation team, said: ‘Criminals like Dufour treat people
as cargo and are interested in them only in terms of their financial
value.’
The men are being processed ‘in line with the immigration rules’
Source:https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/crime/french-people-smuggler-jailed-after-being-caught-portsmouth-international-port-three-iraqi-kurds-caravan-1741185
Comments