Why the BBC could track down a people-smuggling kingpin before the police

For years, a people smuggler known as Scorpion is believed to have controlled the trade across the English Channel. And yet he remained a free man.

Unable to track him down, a Belgian court convicted him in his absence of 121 counts of people-smuggling. I found him living openly in Iraqi Kurdistan, where he admitted to us that he had illegally transported thousands of migrants across the channel.

Barzan Majeed – his real name – was arrested by local police days after the release of our podcast. After the news broke, the question I was asked again and again, was why was it easy for me to find him, but so hard for the police?

The answer is that police forces in different countries struggle to co-operate, but Majeed’s arrest has raised hopes that more co-operation could follow – along with more arrests.

Majeed had been the subject of a joint UK-Belgian investigation before he was tried in absentia, and a senior Kurdish government source told me that British police had been invited to Iraq to question him.

European investigators have given Iraqi officials the names of other high-level smugglers convicted in their absence, says Ann Lukowiak, the Belgian public prosecutor who helped compile the case against Majeed.

“We hope that other cases will follow,” she said, adding that Majeed’s arrest sent a clear message to smugglers that they would be “found and taken down”.

The arrest has sent shockwaves through the smuggling world, according to Rob Lawrie – a former soldier who works with refugees and co-presented the BBC investigation.

In WhatsApp messages, one smuggler told Lawrie that he had considered himself untouchable until Majeed’s arrest.

“It is making us nervous for the simple reason that we felt safe here in north Iraq,” the smuggler said. “We haven’t been stopped by police before, no-one has been arrested here for this. All of us know Barzan was arrested, and everyone is talking about it.”