November 1, 2002	Friday	Sha’aban 25,1423

PARIS, Oct 31: French police say that they’ve brought to a “complete halt” the smuggling of Iraqi Kurdish illegals into Great Britain.

In six recent secret operations, the police say they were able to completely dismantle the networks used to smuggle Iraqi Kurds out of the Sangatte refugee camp, near Calais, into Great Britain.

Police sources admitted that the two principal poles of the smuggling operation were located inside the Sangatte camp itself, and also in the Kurdish community based in northern Paris.

The sources also say that the raids allowed them to identify forty key members of the smuggling rings. As a result, they said, any future attempts at cross-Channel smuggling of illegals out of the Red Cross-operated facility will be, for them, “near impossible.”

They say that they are now that much more confident that the camp - which presently has 2000 inmates — will be able to close, as programmed, in late March.

But, an undercover crew from French public TV channel France 2 demonstrated, in a news programme on Oct 29, that the Kurd-operated smuggling ring is still very much in existence, as two of the network’s reporters were able to meet up with Kurdish smugglers in Paris who assured them they could easily still be smuggled into Great Britain, for $800 per person. The smugglers even detailed for the crew, who carried hidden cameras, the way payment was to be left with a third party who was known to the two “illegals,” until they had safely arrived in London.