Asylum Seeker Jailed for Human Smuggling

They want to live off us while breaking our laws. We need a home guard type army patrolling our shores NOW. That is the ONLY way to stop them coming.

A failed asylum seeker turned people smuggler has been jailed for three years today after masterminding a conspiracy to bring immigrants across the Channel to Britain in tiny inflatable boats.

Sarbast Mohammad Hama, 31, was stopped in a dinghy packed with 13 migrants, including two children, by a Border Force cutter near Folkestone, Kent in March. 

But the Home Office then discovered he had previously been stopped on another inflatable boat on Christmas Day 2018, off the coast of Deal, Kent, with 10 Iraqi migrants.  

Hama was on immigration bail but was going in and out of the UK on an Italian passport he gained after claiming asylum there.

Today he was jailed for three years and four months, after Lewes Crown Court heard Parliament had increased the maximum available sentence.

He was filmed loading boats, pumps and lifejackets on to a car in the Netherlands before switching numberplates in March this year.     

Mrs Justice Christine Laing QC told Hama people passengers across the Channel for his own financial gain - not for humanitarian reasons or to escape ISIS as he had claimed.

'The court and this country has considerable sympathy for people who have lived through war and the impact that has no doubt had on your life.

'The fact is you had asylum in a safe European country. You decided that didn't really suit you. You decided to come to England then leave for your own reasons.

Coming back again this time bringing with you eight complete strangers in circumstances which I am satisfied were for your financial gain and no humanitarian reason.

'You were part of a rather professional organisation to allowed the illegal immigration of people into the UK.

'The security of a country both physically and economically is depended on that country knowing precisely who is within its borders.

'Parliament has seen fit to raise the max sentence very substantially.

'I bear in mind I am sentencing you for one offence of bringing people into this country, your background and previous good character and it is also a feature that the people in the boat were equipped with life jackets which is not the case in every one of those cases which comes before this court.' 

Gareth Burrows for the Crown said the immigration enforcement investigation found Hama claimed asylum in the UK after arriving on a boat from France with another eight Iraqi nationals and one Iranian child in December 2018.

He was on immigration bail when he was filmed buying more boats and equipment from a shop in Holland for 6000 euros in cash three months later.

Once released, Mr. Hama could disappear and go back to doing the same as before and our feeble police force will do nothing to find him.