An Egyptian fisherman who helped run a £12 million ($16 million) people-smuggling operation, and who once told an associate to kill and throw into the sea any migrants caught with phones, has been jailed for 25 years.
Ahmed Ebid, 42, worked out of a house in London, provided for him and his family by the British authorities only three weeks after he arrived by small boat.
Ebid, believed to be the first person convicted of organising illegal Mediterranean crossings from the UK, was working with networks in North Africa to organise boats, bringing over hundreds of migrants at a time on dangerous vessels.
According to the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA), he was involved in at least seven separate crossings in 2022 and 2023 which carried a total of about 3,800 people into Italian waters.
He was initially linked to the smuggling operation after he made calls to satellite phones used by henchmen on board the migrant boats. These were then used to call the Italian coastguard, to relay their position, be towed to safety and taken ashore.
Ebid's number was traced to London and the Italians tipped off the NCA, which then bugged his home.
In one conversation, he told an associate that migrants were not allowed to carry phones on his boats as he sought to avoid law enforcement. “Tell them guys anyone caught with a phone will be killed, thrown in the sea,” he said.
Ebid was arrested and charged in June 2023 and pleaded guilty to assisting illegal immigration but disputed aspects of the case against him.
At a special court sitting known as a Newton Hearing, he claimed he had made only €15,000 ($16,840) from the operation and his involvement was limited to sharing navigational and seafaring advice, which he had learnt as a fisherman in the Mediterranean. He maintained his primary motivation was to move his family to the UK.
But prosecutors said he was involved in the sourcing and provision of boats and crews for crossings from Libya to Europe.
He was involved in the movement of migrants before the crossings, organised their housing and dealt with paperwork. Two notebooks were seized, one of which contained maritime co-ordinates for the area between Libya and Italy.
Ebid's claim to have been a low-level player was rejected by judge Adam Hiddleston, who described him as having a “significant managerial role within an organised crime group”.
Passing sentence, Mr Hiddleston told Ebid that the "conspiracy you were a part of generated millions of pounds" and that he must have been a "beneficiary" of "a significant amount".
This "truly staggering" amount of money came from the "hard-earned savings of desperate individuals", who were "ruthlessly and cynically exploited" by Ebid and his fellow criminals.
"The treatment of the migrants on your orders and in your name was horrifying,” said the judge. "They were simply a commodity to you.
"The important thing to you was that each paid up the exorbitant fare that was charged for their crossing and that nobody did anything to compromise your operation – such as by carrying a mobile phone.”
Speaking after sentencing, Tim Burton, for the Crown Prosecution Service, said the Egyptian "played a leading role in a sophisticated operation" that "endangered lives, for his own and others’ financial gain".
“Vulnerable people were transported on long sea journeys in ill-equipped fishing vessels completely unsuitable for carrying the large number of passengers who were on board," he added.
"His repeated involvement in helping to facilitate these dangerous crossings showed a complete disregard for the safety of thousands of people, whose lives were put at serious risk."
Jacque Beer, the NCA's regional head of investigation, explained that many of those Ebid had moved across the Mediterranean would have eventually ended up coming to the UK in small boats.
"Ebid was part of a crime network who preyed upon the desperation of migrants to ship them across the Mediterranean in death-trap boats," she said.
“The cruel nature of his business was demonstrated by the callous way he spoke of throwing migrants into the sea if they didn’t follow his rules. To him they were just a source of profit."
The court was told the calculation for the amount of money Ebid had made came from interviews with the migrants carried out by Italian authorities, who passed on that information to the NCA as part of its investigation into Ebid. The average paid by the 3,781 migrants whose passage he organised was £3,272, meaning he made £12,375,212.
During a search of his home, two Italian mobile phones were seized along with other devices, on which were found images of boats, conversations about the possible purchase of vessels, videos of migrants making the journey and screenshots detailing money transfers. There were also photographs showing a large amount of cash on a bed.
In October 2022, more than 640 migrants were rescued by the Italian authorities after they attempted to cross in a wooden boat from Libya. It was taken into port in Sicily and two bodies were recovered.
In another crossing, 265 migrants were rescued by the Italian coastguard from a 20-metre fishing boat found adrift in the Mediterranean after leaving Benghazi, Libya, in early December 2022.
In April 2023, two separate search-and-rescue operations were mounted following distress calls to the coastguard. More than 600 migrants were on board each boat.
Ebid has a previous conviction for attempting to smuggle a tonne of cannabis into Italy, for which he was sentenced to six years in jail.
Police recently arrested suspected people smugglers they say made €30 million ($33.7 million) from taking migrants across the Mediterranean.
According to Europol, Egyptians have increasingly been involved in smuggling on routes into and throughout the European Union, including the Mediterranean and western Balkan routes.
