Four years for smuggling
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by Keith Hunt • A lorry driver who smuggled 25
illegal immigrants into the UK in a consignment of musical Christmas cards has been jailed for four years.
Ferry company P&O applied for more than £15,500 compensation—the cost of sending the immigrants back to France— from driver Akeel Arshad Hussain. But a judge said he could not order the unemployed 24-year-old, who has a diploma in business studies, to pay the amount because he had insufficient means.
The 14 Turkish men, 10 Chinese men and one Chinese woman were hiding under a plywood construction on which the boxes of cards were standing.
Andrew Goymer, prosecuting said Hussain, arrived at Dover Docks in the hired Mercedes on 6 December last year. Hussain, he said, was apparently travelling alone. He told an immigration officer what his load was and said he had been to Holland.
"There were two unusual things about his arrival straight away," Goymer told Maidstone Crown Court. "First, he produced a passport which was not his, it was his brother's. Secondly, asked if he drove for himself or a company, he said he drove for a company. It was not true."
Hussain, of Burlington Avenue, Slough, denied facilitating illegal entry, claiming he did not know the immigrants were in the lorry. He did not think it was suspicious that he was paid £500 to collect and deliver the Christmas cards as it was not an excessive amount of money.
Judge Michael Neligan told Hussain at Maidstone Crown Court: "It may be there were others behind you in this scheme. Nevertheless, you were an important part of the chain which was designed to bring into this country persons who had no right to be here. "1 bear in mind your age and will reduce the sentence I would otherwise have passed."