A man convicted by a Carlisle jury of piloting a small boat crammed with fellow migrants as it crossed the English Channel has been given a 27-month jail term.
Border Force officials intercepted the heavily laden inflatable craft as it headed from France to Dover on the late morning of Saturday November 16 2024.
Aerial surveillance captured 51 adult migrants, many wearing life jackets and with their legs hanging over the side of the boat. At the back, with his right hand in the tiller, was Sudanese national Nader Osman Adam, aged around 30.
“He is also operating the throttle and clearly in control of the vessel,” prosecutor Tim Evans told Carlisle Crown Court.
At one stage Osman removed a distinctive beige hoodie he was wearing, revealing a black T-shirt bearing the Batman logo. He also appeared to pull a dark coloured snood over his face and was seen to put on an orange lifejacket.
Giving evidence in court, immigration investigative officer Patrick Brough said of the damning video footage: “The male was seen to move to the back right of the boat. He is sitting down, I believe, in an attempt to conceal himself from our cameras.”
After the boat was intercepted, migrants were transferred to a different vessel and photographed. Osman, assigned the label “migrant 36” was pictured wearing the black Batman T-shirt.
His phone was seized and analysed. One photograph showed him wearing the beige hoodie. Two videos “plainly taken from the back of a packed migrant boat”, said Mr Evans, matched camera footage shot by Border Force officials of the same boat journey.
Messages found on Osman’s phone were analysed and translated from Arabic into English. “I (sic) as soon as I saw the emergency I switched off the engine and hidden like the rest,” read one.
Mr Evans said: “That message was sent on November 18 2024, as part of a conversation with a Facebook user who has not been identified.”
Osman admitted arriving in the UK without valid entry clearance. He denied a second charge of assisting unlawful immigration to the UK by piloting the boat but was convicted by jurors on a majority verdict of 10-2.
In court he recalled leaving conflict-ravaged Sudan following after his Army serviceman father was killed. He crossed the Sahara Desert, making his way through Chad and Libya, sailing to Italy on a small boat and then travelling to France before paying smugglers 450 euros to cross the Channel.
“I am looking for safe haven. I want to find a home to stay in,” he told jurors in evidence.
From Dover, Osman was around 620 miles to Aberdeen, where he was briefly housed. He was then arrested, brought to court in England and has been remanded in custody since.
“This is not a man who is criminally sophisticated,” defence barrister Andrew Evans told today’s sentencing hearing. “This was a one-way trip. There is no question of him being involved in the organisation. He was a migrant who had something to gain from driving the boat. We will never know.”
Recorder Anna Vigars KC, imposing an immediate jail term, said to Osman: “At the end of that (time in custody), I have no doubt that the Home Office will wish to take administrative steps to ensure that you don’t remain in this country.
“What it is said that you did — and what the jury have found proved against you — was that you piloted the small boat in which you and 50 other people attempted to come illegally into this country.”
