More than 4,000 migrants were smuggled into Britain during the biggest people-trafficking operation yet uncovered in Europe, a French court heard yesterday, as the trial of alleged gang members began.

The 25 defendants were part of a complex network, codenamed Pashto, which helped Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Somalians and Ethiopians to cross the Channel for a fee of about £4,000 each, the Paris Criminal Tribunal was told.

The gang was broken up in 2005 after a European-wide police operation involving forces in Britain, France, Greece, Italy and Turkey. Detectives made a total of 53 arrests, including seven in Britain.

Prosecutors said that migrants were brought to Europe in boats before being smuggled across the Channel from Calais. They often travelled in inhumane conditions, according to the French state prosecution service.

The trial will focus on the gang’s allegedly criminal activities in 2004 and 2005. But the court heard that detectives believed it had been operating from 1999 and transported between 4,000 and 5,000 migrants to Britain.

Only ten of the defendants were in court yesterday at the start of the trial, which is due to last two weeks. Of the 12 suspects released on bail after their arrest, 11 failed to appear. Four other alleged gang members were never caught and are the subject of arrest warrants.

The court heard that a majority of the gang members were Afghans but that its leader, Barzan Mohammed Amin, 22, was an Iraqi Kurd. Mâitre Léon-Lef Forster, his barrister, denied the accusations.

Mr Mohammed Amin lived in Troyes, in eastern France, when the gang was allegedly smuggling migrants from Calais to Britain, he said. “It is difficult to see how he could have recruited smugglers from Troyes, where he was in a residence from which he never moved. There is no proof of personal enrichment. They seem to want to give a criminal dimension to what was really a system of mutual help.” The police investigation began two years ago when an Afghan man was stopped by police with five of his compatriots in his car. Undercover officers established the identity of his contacts, who were placed under surveillance for several months.

The court heard that migrants were recruited in their home countries and told to transfer the trafficking fee to Western Union bank accounts in Britain. They were then taken by land to Turkey and transported across the Adriatic to Italian ports such as Brindisi and Bari in often flimsy boats.

From there they were smuggled into lorries that reached France through the Franco-Italian border at Vintimille, prosecutors say.

The migrants were taken to safe houses in provincial French towns such as Troyes, Oyannax and Rheims, in eastern France, before being moved to the capital. There, they stayed in squats or public parks near the mainline stations, Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est.

The gang is alleged to have transported the migrants in small groups by car or van to Calais, where most were encouraged to jump into the backs of lorries bound for cross-Channel ferries.

The trial continues.

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