Barzan Majeed, considered to be Europe's most wanted migrant smuggler, has been arrested in Iraq's Kurdistan region after two years on the run. Nicknamed 'The Scorpion', Majeed and his gang of human traffickers smuggled around 10,000 migrants in boats and lorries across the English Channel.
An investigation carried out by the BBC to locate the absconding human smuggler tracked him down to Iraq's Sulaymaniya city.
“Maybe a thousand, maybe 10,000. I don’t know, I didn’t count,” he told the BBC during a call last month regarding the number of migrants he had trafficked from the city.
“God (writes it down) when you’re going to pass away, but this is sometimes your fault. God doesn’t never say ‘Go inside the boat’."
In a series of tweets on Monday, the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) thanked the BBC for "highlighting his case, and remain determined to do all we can to disrupt and dismantle the criminal networks involved in smuggling people to the UK, wherever they operate".
According to the NCA, Majeed was detained on May 12 by Kurdish security forces.
"Majeed, who had previously lived in Nottingham, was the subject of an NCA wanted appeal in November 2022 after he was convicted of people smuggling offences in his absence in Belgium, following a joint UK-Belgian investigation," the Agency tweeted.
Speaking to the BBC, an official of the Kurdistan Regional Government said officials used the British broadcaster's findings to locate Majeed.
"The arrest was made outside his home, they arrested him the moment he stepped out of the home and arrested him without any major problems,” the official was quoted as saying to the BBC.
“We are now looking at charges against him here first and foremost, and then we will be discussing with European police and prosecutors who want to question him and deal with him.”
Majeed's gang is believed to have controlled much of the people-smuggling trade between Europe and the UK between 2016 to 2021.
Twenty-six gang members were arrested and convicted at courts in the UK, France and Belgium following a two-year international police operation.
However, Majeed, who managed to evade arrest and was absconding, was tried in absentia at a court in Belgium and convicted of 121 counts of people-smuggling.
In October 2022, he was sentenced to 10 years in jail and fined 968,00 euros.
When the BBC found him last month, Majeed agreed to meet at a mall in Sulaymaniyah and said at the time that he wasn't the leader of the gang.
Without showing any remorse for the migrants, he said, "Nobody forced them. They wanted to. They were begging the smugglers, ‘Please, please do this for us’, Sometimes the smugglers say, ‘Just for the sake of God, I will help them’, And then they complain, they say, ‘Oh this, that...’ No, this is not true.”
