LONDON – The UK has “disrupted" a major suspected Kurdish network alleged to have smuggled hundreds of Kurds from Iraq into Britain, the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) announced on Tuesday.
The operation involved 350 officers from various police departments including the Metropolitan Police in London, in cooperation with French, Belgium, and Dutch counterparts over a year-long investigation.
It is one of the biggest operations of its kind undertaken by the NCA since its foundation in 2013, the agency said.
Described as a "major strike" against the suspected network, the operation took place in several locations across the UK on Tuesday morning.
Twenty-one people were arrested.
Each migrant is believed to have paid between £5,000 and £10,000 to the group to be smuggled in the United Kingdom.
"It followed an NCA investigation into a Kurdish network suspected of smuggling people to the UK from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands," the agency said.
NCA Deputy Director Tom Dowdall said the involvement of a large number of British forces plus other agencies "reflects the scale and severity of the suspected criminality."
"We believe we have identified and disrupted a significant network which is suspected of smuggling hundreds of migrants into the UK and planned to carry on going," he added.
Facing the financial crisis and the war against ISIS, many people from the Kurdistan Region and other Kurdish cities under the control of the Iraqi government began to immigrate to Europe as part of wider migration flows from the Middle East and North Africa since at least early 2014.
