Three alleged members of a people trafficking gang went on trial yesterday over a clandestine Channel voyage that left seven dead.
The deadly trip from Dunkirk towards England ended in tragedy when a tiny boat laden with up to 25 migrants capsized.
An entire family was killed in the incident – Rasoul Iran-Nejad and his wife Shiva, both 35, drowned alongside their children Anita, nine, Armin, six, and baby boy Artin, 15 months.
Two other migrants also died, with the rest, including three children, miraculously rescued.
Rahimifar (pictured), of Iran’s Kurdish minority, appeared at Dunkirk’s criminal court yesterday
Baby Artin’s body was not found until months after the October 2020 disaster, on a beach in Norway 600 miles away.
Yesterday alleged gang kingpin Rauf Perot Rahimifar, 38, appeared in an armoured glass dock, at Dunkirk’s criminal court, charged with arranging the fatal trip.
Beside him were his ‘accomplices’ Mostafa Kakelahi and Hoshiar Khezri.
The trio of Iranian kurds are said to have continued arranging repeated small boat trips across the Channel even long months after the seven-death disaster.
Mr Iran-Nejad (left) and his wife, Shiva, (right) with two rescue workers in a French migrant camp. The children are seen from left to right: Artin, Anita and Armin
Baby Artin’s (pictured) body was not found until months after the October 2020 disaster, on a beach in Norway 600 miles away
All three face long sentences over charges that include manslaughter, deliberately endangering life, and running a people-trafficking operation said to have operated from France to England from the start of September 2020 until as late as October the next year.
A fourth man, Assalan Ghorbani, an Iranian migrant said to have volunteered to pilot the doomed boat in return for a free passage, has also been charged with manslaughter and deliberately endangering life.
He is also accused of people smuggling and joining a criminal conspiracy – but only for the night of the tragedy. The conspiracy charge alone can mean ten years’ jail.
Ghorbani, the only of the four accused not to have been in custody, was not present in court.
Judge Caroline Vilnat was told the people-smuggling gang had run its boats from between Calais and Dunkirk, at Loon Plage.
The craft at the centre of the case was a small fishing boat, complete with a cabin.
But the smugglers put the family of five in the cabin to shelter them from the chill winds, and they were trapped inside as it sank.
The fishing boat, at just 15 feet long, had been grossly overloaded with passengers.
The migrants had been staying at northern France’s latest ‘jungle’, a camp of tents and makeshift shacks in wasteland and undergrowth by a deserted railway line and factory near Dunkirk suburb Grande Synthe.
After 25 or so were selected, they were taken to their boat and set off in rough seas for the Kent coast in the early hours.
But by 9.30am their boat had been capsized by a large wave, throwing many migrants into the sea, while the desperate family struggled to escape their cabin.
The terrified survivors only got back on to French soil thanks to a pleasure cruiser who happened to see them, and call emergency services.
And while the father of the family Rasoul Iran-Nejad did manage to get out of the cabin, he drowned after repeatedly diving down, saturated, fully-clothed and freezing, in a fruitless bid to free and save his wife and three children.
The bodies of the other two victims, believed to have been Youssef Garvis and Sori Shorsh, were never found.
Alleged ringleader Rahimifar, himself an asylum seeker, was arrested in the small town of Viborg, Denmark, in June 2021 – with police saying he was suspected of running hundreds of illegal and dangerous voyages from France to England.
After working temporarily at a McDonald’s under a migration integration scheme in Denmark, he was said to have run a failed grocery shop.
Only then is he said to have turned his hand to making regular, and far more lucrative, trips to the coast between Calais and Dunkirk, delivering boats for migrants, and overseeing launches.
Kakelahi, 42, admitted aiding three voyages at the hearing but claimed he only did so to fund his own ticket to Britain.
Asked why the doomed passengers, who paid around £2,000 each to get to England, were not given promised life jackets, he said: ‘Ask the people smugglers, not me.
Alleged ringleader Rahimifar, himself an asylum seeker, was arrested in Viborg, Denmark, in June 2021 – with police saying he was suspected of running hundreds of illegal and dangerous voyages from France to England
‘I am not a people trafficker, I only helped out three times because I was told that would get me a free ticket to England.’
Asked if he knew he was sending migrants to their death, he said: ‘I wasn’t aware of the size of the waves or temperature of the sea – it wasn’t my part of the job.
‘And I was not involved after the shipwreck.’
He claimed mobile data was only there to meet friends.’
Kakelahi said he had been at the Grand Synthe camp for a year after fleeing poverty in Iran, claiming he left school illiterate aged nine to start work.
The migrant boat was spotted by Marbuzet, a pleasure boat. This graphic – based data from shipping tracker Marine Traffic – shows the Marbuzet’s course on Tuesday morning
Prosecutors have based their case on substantial mobile phone evidence, with assistance from British law enforcement and the Danish police and courts.
The court was shown autoroute camera images of a Nissan Qashqai – with Danish plates – towing the boat near Loon Plage hours before it sank.
The car, said to be owned by a friend of Rahimifar, was seen again the day after the sinking, heading back to Denmark, without the boat.s
Rahimifar denied the pictures of the car proved anything, saying: ‘there’s no evidence I was in it’.
Police finally arrested Rahimifar fearing he was about to flee back to Iran.
The family had left Iran on August 7 to travel to Turkey, before taking a ferry to Italy and driving to France. Pictured is toddler, Artin
He had already stopped visiting France after an arrest warrant was issued – but is alleged to have continued staging voyages until the moment he was clapped in irons.
Rahimifar said in a Danish court as he unsuccessfully fought extradition to face trial in Dunkirk: ‘I am innocent. Please do not deliver me to France.’
Rahimifar’s wife Hajar, 33, and their four children, are believed to remain in Denmark – and he is asking to serve any prison sentence there, rather than in France.
Rahimifar claims to have fled the troubled Iranian town of Sardasht, near the Iraq border, before arriving in Scandanavia in 2016.
Rahimifar’s wife Hajar Rasouli (pictured), 33, and their four children, are believed to remain in Denmark
He was convicted of being a ‘Peeping Tom’ in Denmark shortly before his manslaughter arrest two years ago, being fined to spying on a woman undressing.
The armada of small boats trafficking migrants across the Channel has been soaring – from being almost unheard of a few years ago, to an astonishing 45,756 in 2022, including 90 on Christmas Day.
The case continues.