A major criminal network based in Teesside, UK, has been brought down after a thorough investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA). This gang was responsible for sneaking hundreds of people into the UK illegally. The main person in charge, Muhammad Zada, who is 43 years old and from Middlesbrough, was found guilty by a jury on July 11, 2024, after a trial that lasted six weeks.
Zada and his friends were caught planning at least five different schemes to bring Iraqi-Kurdish migrants into the UK from other parts of Europe in 2017. They would charge these people between £5,000 and £10,000 to hide them in different vehicles, including big trucks with refrigerators, to bring them into the country. Zada’s helpers were in charge of finding drivers and helping to move people across borders. Some of these helpers were Pareiz Abdullah (41 years old), Khalid Mahmud (50 years old), Marek Sochanic (39 years old), Gurprit Kahlon (67 years old), and Bestoon Moslih (41 years old).
The first person to get caught was Milan Sochanic, who is Marek Sochanic’s father. In March 2017, he drove a van from the UK to Belgium twice to pick up and transport people. On his second trip, French police stopped him at Calais and found eight migrants hiding in the van among some furniture. Milan Sochanic was then found guilty of helping to smuggle people in France. It turns out that Zada had bought the van and had “Milan Builders” painted on the side before planning these trips with help from Marek Sochanic.
Another time, the gang tried to smuggle migrants from France and the Netherlands to the UK by hiding them in the back of big trucks that usually carry fruits and vegetables. But Dutch police found out about their plan and stopped 12 migrants from being loaded into a truck in Rotterdam. The gang didn’t give up, though. They kept trying to smuggle people by hiding them in a campervan, in vans with bicycle boxes, and even in a shipment of mattresses. But each time, police in France or Belgium caught them.
The NCA worked really hard to catch these criminals. They filmed Zada checking out a campervan that his friend Gurprit Kahlon had rented to move migrants from France. In February 2018, the NCA organized a big operation to arrest Zada and other important members of the smuggling gang. About 350 police officers from different groups, including the North East Regional Organised Crime Unit, helped with this operation.
After the trial at Newcastle Crown Court, Mohammed Zada was found guilty of five counts of planning to help break immigration laws. Marek Sochanic, Khaled Mahmud, and Pareiz Abdullah were each found guilty of one count of the same crime. Gurprit Kahlon and Bestoon Moslih had already said they were guilty of one count of this crime before the trial. Zada and Sochanic ran away before the trial started, so they were found guilty even though they weren’t there. The police are still looking for them. All six men will be told their punishments on September 20, 2024.
Martin Clarke, who is in charge at the NCA, said that this investigation helped them find and stop a big people smuggling gang that wanted to bring hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people into the UK illegally. He said that Zada and his gang didn’t care about the safety of the people they were smuggling. They were willing to put these people in dangerous places like refrigerated trucks, just to make money quickly. Clarke also said that the NCA is still working hard with other countries to stop criminals who treat people like things to be bought and sold, putting lives at risk. He mentioned that the NCA alone is looking into more than 70 cases of big organized immigration crime or human trafficking right now.
This case shows how serious the problem of human trafficking and illegal immigration is. It also shows how hard police and other agencies work to stop these crimes and protect vulnerable people. The NCA and other law enforcement groups will keep working together to find and stop these dangerous criminal gangs, making sure that those who try to smuggle people face justice.