Police raids target people-smuggling gang

Scotland Yard yesterday claimed to have disrupted one of Britain's biggest people-smuggling rackets, which is believed to have brought about 1,000 illegal immigrants into the country over two years.

Officers staged dawn raids on 12 addresses in London and one in the Midlands targeting what police believe are the gang's two leaders. Those arrested were described as being among the "premier league" of smuggling gangs, running up to 20 people a week through UK ports.

The journeys of people smuggled into Britain started in the Chinese province of Fujian. One gang ran the European leg of the route, bringing people secreted in lorries from France to the UK.

Chinese people would pay up to £21,000 to be smuggled to Britain. Police say the trip could take up to 18 months, with people placed in safe houses for weeks waiting for the next part of their trip.

Those arrested yesterday were mainly of Turkish heritage, and alleged to be working with "Snakehead" smugglers based in China. The gang is believed to have received £5,000 for each person smuggled into Britain from Europe. Two Chinese people were also arrested and police say they may have disrupted two gangs involved in people smuggling.

Twelve people were held on suspicion of facilitating illegal immigration into the UK, one was accused of possessing a false passport.

Police are unclear where many of the illegal immigrants end up, but believe some work in restaurants in London's Chinatown. Operation Greensea began over a year ago and involved authorities in Belgium and France, which have carried out their own raids in recent months.

At one flat in Peckham High Street, south London, police found 23 Chinese people living in cramped conditions. Neighbours said they had no idea so many people were in the property. Inside the three-bedroom flat above a shop one dingy room contained three bare bunk beds, two other rooms held double beds.

One pregnant Chinese woman who lives below the flat said she was arrested in the raid but released shortly after. "The police came in very early this morning. They broke down the door and they arrested me and my husband. I was so scared. I am pregnant ... I don't know anything about the people who live upstairs. I have never heard anything."

Detective Superintendent Steve Richardson said some families and communities in Fujian club to together to pay the up to £20,000 to smuggle someone into Britain. They believe the smuggled person will send money home: "It is a myth to think they are peasants and poor. Some are skilled ... and are capable of earning good money to send back home."

In 2000 a total of 58 people from Fujian were found dead in a lorry at Dover after they suffocated as they were smuggled across the Channel. Four years later 23 Chinese people were drowned in Morecambe Bay while picking cockles.

In Fujian province in south-eastern China wages are above the Chinese average, but are still about 1% of the average wage in Britain.

Wah Piow Tan, a solicitor who has represented many illegal immigrants from Fujian, said numbers had decreased, mainly because the restaurant jobs market was saturated.