Two migrants jailed under new small boats law

Two men have become the first to be jailed under a new law targeting people who risk the safety of others by piloting small boats across the Channel.

Alnour Mohamed Ali, a Sudanese national, was given a 27-month sentence having previously admitted to steering an extremely crowded dinghy carrying 74 people in April.

A second man, Afghan national Mohammed Tajik, was given a two-year sentence after pleading guilty to piloting a vessel across the Channel during poor weather conditions in January.

Both admitted to endangering lives at sea under the new Border, Security, Asylum and Immigration Act, which came into force earlier this year.

It makes causing or risking the death or serious injury of a person at sea in a small boat a crime, a law designed to target people in charge of vessels which have illegally carried more than 200,000 people to the UK since 2018.

While the defendants were charged over separate incidents, they were sentenced together on Wednesday at Canterbury Crown Court due to the similarity of their offences.

The court was played drone footage of both vessels the defendants admitted steering.

In the case of Ali, 26, the boat was so full people could be seen clinging onto the edges, some with their legs dangling in the water. Many of those on board during the 9 April crossing were not wearing life jackets.

French officials previously said two men and two women drowned off the coast of northern France while trying to get into the boat, but British prosecutors now accept he was not responsible for those deaths.

At the time, French authorities said more than 40 people were rescued from the water at Equihen-Plage, near Boulogne-sur-Mer.

Ali's barrister said there had been "misreporting" around those deaths, which had resulted in "severe repercussions" for his client. He accused the National Crime Agency of "wrongly informing the media" Ali was culpable.

The sentencing judge Recorder Simon James agreed that the suggestion from British authorities that Ali was responsible for the deaths amounted to "misinformation".

The court was played footage of a French rescue vessel pulling alongside the small boat and throwing several life jackets to those on board as it continued onwards.

Separately, the court was shown footage of Tajik, 32, with his hand on the tiller of a small boat which embarked on a Channel crossing during foggy conditions on 17 January.

Several of those inside the crowded boat were not wearing life jackets despite the wintry conditions.

Wednesday's double-hearing also laid bare the circumstances in which some migrants dec