But will this huge trial, and the prospect of tough sentences, act as a serious deterrent for a smuggling industry that has, in terms of the sheer number of successful small boat crossings, continued to thrive in the years since these arrests?
The prosecutors directly involved in this trial were not willing to talk to the , but Pascal Marconville, lead prosecutor at the regional Court of Appeal for northern France, suggested that the long sentences were part of a broader strategy to raise the cost of smuggling for the gangs and their customers.
“The action taken by French police, with the support of investigative judges, is designed not only to thwart their actions, but also to make such operations so expensive that they lose their appeal,” Mr Marconville told us.
He described how the gangs had evolved in recent years from informal groups supporting their own countrymen to “networks organised much like drug gangs”.
He went on to sketch out a fragmented network with different “sectors” focusing on separate parts of the smuggling industry.
“It’s like chess, and they have [the advantage] on the board. So they’re always one step ahead of us. We have to adapt and understand how we can counter these networks. We’ve struggled with the ringleaders because when they’re arrested and imprisoned they still manage to run their networks from inside,” he said.
Despite the difficulties for law enforcement officials working across different countries and, for instance, different laws related to bail and standards of evidence, Mr Marconville praised the collaboration between French and British officials, saying the UK was “very willing to come up with solutions to improve co-operation”.
The Germans, on the other hand “who we always think of as very efficient people, don’t make things easier [for us]”, he noted.
