ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - The British National Crime Agency (NCA) announced on Tuesday that they had arrested three people on suspicions of links to a people smuggling network that move migrants from Kurdistan Region to the UK, in an operation involving the NCA and Kurdistan Region’s Asayish forces.

“This is the next significant step in taking on the people smuggling gangs who dominate the deadly cross-Channel small boat trade, many of whom operate from the Kurdistan Region,” said the NCA Director General of Operations Rob Jones.

The group arrested were linked to Amanj Hassan Zada, known as Amanj Zaman, a convicted UK-based facilitator who was jailed for 17 years following an NCA investigation in November.

“We have had fantastic co-operation from Asayish agencies in both Erbil and Sulaymaniyah as part of this investigation, and I’d like to thank them for that,” said branch commander Martin Clarke, who was one of the officers deployed to assist with the captures.

This is the first such cooperation between the UK’s NCA and Asayish forces in Erbil and Sulaimani. The arrests took place between January 8 and January 12 where NCA officers were deployed in cooperation with local authorities to make the captures.

The three men arrested involved a banker who was in charge of processing transactions on behalf of Zada, a 38 year old male who was accused of coordinating the movement of the migrants, and another man in his 30s accused of operating as the middle-man gathering migrants for movement by Zada’s network, according to the NCA report.

The arrests came amid Iraqi PM Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani’s visit to London where the matter of illegal migration comprised a main subject of discussion.

“Secure borders are a vital foundation of our Plan for Change, so I am also very pleased get started on talks for a bespoke returns agreement between our countries. The deal will help dismantle the people smugglers’ business model,” said UK premier Keir Starmer before meeting with Sudani according to the UK government’s official website.

Thousands of migrants illegally try to cross the deadly English channel every year, with a large number of them coming from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.

The UK and Iraq struck a deal in late November 2024 to crack down on illegal migration as part of the UK’s plan to tackle illegal migration.