LONDON: A suspected people trafficker has been arrested in Iraqi Kurdistan after being identified by the BBC.
Kardo Jaf, also known as Kardo Ranya, was detained on suspicion of human trafficking.
He is believed to have helped smuggle thousands of people into the UK, frequently changing his name to avoid identification by the authorities and hinder the issuing of an international arrest warrant.
However, the 28-year-old was identified by BBC journalists Sue Mitchell and Rob Lawrie as part of their investigative podcast “Intrigue: To Catch a King.”
In the podcast, Jaf denied being a people trafficker and said that he simply advised people how to leave Iraq.
However, he was detained by officers of the Kurdistan Regional Security Agency following the podcast’s release, and is believed to be a key figure in an international smuggling ring based in Iraqi Kurdistan.
His alias, Kardo Ranya, used the name of the town from which he and other high-profile members of the network originated.
Dr. Muthana Nader, an MP in the Iraqi Kurdistan parliament, told the BBC he thought about 70 percent of all illegal trafficking of people into the UK could be organized by the Ranya gang.
“This is a powerful network that all comes back to Ranya,” he said.
Jaf used social media to promote his operation, the BBC investigation found, promising to take people to the UK from as far away as Afghanistan, and using testimonies from others who had made the trip. Different routes and modes of transport were also offered in different price brackets.
A BBC employee posing as a potential client was offered a “VIP” flight service to Manchester for a whole family at a cost of £160,000 ($214,000) by Jaf.
At the other end of the spectrum, others who had used Jaf to reach the UK but were less wealthy described dangerous journeys in small boats across the English Channel from France, usually in overcrowded vessels sailing late at night.
The BBC heard stories from some of Jaf’s less-wealthy passengers who described being shunted onto dangerously overpacked boats late at night and left to steer themselves across the channel.
The UK’s National Crime Agency announced on Tuesday that a suspected people smuggler had been arrested on May 13.
Rob Jones, the director general of operations at the NCA, spoke of a “potentially very significant arrest of an individual who has been under active investigation by numerous law enforcement agencies because of his links to people smuggling.”
Jones added: “There should not be an assumption that individuals like those featured in (the BBC’s) documentary are out of our reach.”
The director general said the NCA had over 100 current investigations into people traffickers, including in parts of the world “where they might previously have thought they could operate with impunity.”
