LILLE, France: French prosecutors on Tuesday sought one to nine years in prison for 17 alleged smugglers they accuse of ferrying migrants across the Channel to England.
It is the latest of several trials in France targeting smugglers, but one of the first to target a group using so-called “taxi boats”, a technique used since 2023 in which they taxi along the shore in dinghies to pick up migrants after they have already waded into the water.
France and Britain have vowed to crack down on people smugglers who heap migrants on flimsy vessels to make the dangerous crossing in exchange for thousands of dollars.
But so far France has stopped migrants only on the beach -- not already in the water -- leading smuggling gangs to start picking up migrants in the sea. The waves and overcrowding, combined with the fact that many people trying to make the crossing cannot swim, make these boardings particularly dangerous.
The 17 men on trial in the northern city of Lille include eight Syrians, as well as Libyans, Iraqis and Tunisians among other nationalities.
They stand accused of helping to organise around 50 illegal Channel crossings, guiding migrants to the beach to board dinghies, and driving the boats along the shore to pick travellers up directly in the water in 2023.
Four of them -- who say they were born in Iraq and Syria -- have been accused of manslaughter on September 26, 2023, when a 24-year-old Eritrean woman died during an attempted crossing.
