September 03 2021
Danish police have arrested an Iranian refugee who is accused of being the mastermind behind much of the flood of refugees trying to cross the English Channel to Britain this past year.
Rauf Perot Rahimifar, 37, is an Iranian Kurdish refuge living in Denmark He was in court in Denmark August 22 accused of presiding over potentially hundreds of crossings, including voyages in which the refugees died because the boats used by Rahimifar are too flimsy for the rugged sea in the English Channel.
French and British security agencies claimed the father-of-three was a major player in people smuggling operations.
Danish court documents, seen by the Daily Mail of Britain, contain Rahimifar’s phone records reportedly showing he made regular trips from his home in Denmark to northern France to oversee the start of the crossings.
His role, the documents said, was to acquire and transport the boats.
Refugees have been trying to cross the channel by boat for years, but the volume of attempts has soared in recent months. The UK said 828 people in 30 small boats tried to cross the channel on just the one day of August 21. That not only set a record, but broke the record of more than 600 set just nine days earlier.
In total, more than 12,000 migrants have tried to cross the channel from France to England so far this year compared to 8,500 in all of 2020. The largest group of boat people is Iranian, though they include dozens of nationalities.
Acting on a European arrest warrant issued by their French counterparts, Danish police swooped down on Rahimifar in June.
Judge Kirsten Maigaard said Rahimifar should be extradited to France, where accusations of human trafficking, neglectful manslaughter and membership of a criminal enterprise await. If convicted in France, he could face up to 10 years in jail.
After the decision was read out, Rahimifar put his head in his hands and his lawyer, Trine Hoegedal Nielsen, appealed the extradition.
“I am innocent. Please find the documents so they do not deliver me to France,” Rahimifar said.
A final decision on Rahim-ifar’s extradition will be made soon by the High Court of Western Denmark, his lawyer said.
Rahimifar enjoyed a quiet life with his wife Hajar, 35, and three children in the sleepy cathedral city of Viborg in Denmark. From their apartment in a leafy suburb, he would attend local Danish classes for asylum seekers, while Hajar biked out in the morning past forests to do the family’s shopping, the Daily Mail reported.
The couple arrived in Denmark in 2016, successfully finding sanctuary after fleeing Sardasht.
Rahimifar had been given a helping hand on a refugee integration scheme run by the local McDonald’s, which offered him temporary work.
But it wasn’t long before he was convicted as a “Peeping Tom” for spying on a female acquaintance as she undressed in January this year, and given a hefty fine.
Intelligence sources in Britain and Europe told the Daily Mail they feared he was about to flee back to Iran before they pinpointed his home in Europe and caught up with him.
“We found his precise address in Denmark at the eleventh hour. We believe the morning after the raid he was going to escape by driving in his car via Turkey to his own country,” the sources told the Daily Mail. “We had to stop him as we also suspected, once there, he was planning to set up a factory making boats in his home region for specific use in the Channel crossings.”
At the McDonald’s where he worked as part of the refugee program, staff said he was “quiet,” “shy” and a “family man.” A supervisor added, however, that McDonald’s bosses turned him down for a permanent job after nearly a year because of his poor command of Danish. “We needed someone who could do everything and he couldn’t because of the language difficulties,” added the supervisor.
He then tried to run a fruit and vegetable shop in Viborg’s little city center. His business venture lasted barely six months before being wound up in June last year, according to Denmark’s company registry. The grocery store had received a damning assessment from Danish food health and safety inspectors that same month, the Daily Mail reported.