BBC tracks down man behind Channel crossing which killed Sara, 7

We arrived in Antwerp in May and began working on a plan to locate and confront The Mountain. One of his previous clients had shared a photograph, and another source had provided us with a copy of his Iraqi passport and a European identity card that appeared to have been issued in 2021 in a remote Italian hill town where investigations are under way into organised crime.

We discovered that The Mountain’s real name was Rebwar Abas Zangana, a Kurdish man from northern Iraq. Unmarried. Apparently a devout Muslim. A migrant himself – with an unclear immigration status – who was known to have been living recently in Calais, Brussels, and Antwerp. We were told he worked with two partners and that there might be an even more senior figure back in Iraq.

Mahmoud – our Arabic-speaking colleague posing as a migrant seeking a route to the UK – met a middleman in a barber’s shop in Antwerp, who confirmed that he knew The Mountain and would arrange for him to call us.

We waited nearly two weeks for that call, but eventually, late one night, our phone rang.

“Hello. So you want to get to Britain? How many seats do you need? Are you ready?”

The Mountain spoke in short, curt sentences. On that call, and two subsequent phone conversations, he confirmed that he was still very much in business, assuring us that the trip across the Channel was “a safe job”, and that he had refined his tactics since Sara’s death.

“How many of you are ready?” he asked, adding that the weather in Calais wasn’t good enough for a crossing the next day.

But hours after that first call to us, we learned from a source that The Mountain had recently left Antwerp in a hurry. The implication was that he feared arrest for his role in the five deaths in April. The Mountain was on the run.