A Turkish national has been jailed for 11 years after being found guilty of supplying thousands of small boats and engines used by people smugglers to transport asylum seekers across the English Channel. Adem Savas was also fined €400,000 (£346,000). The 45-year-old was arrested after arriving at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam in November 2024 and stood trial in Bruges, Belgium, for alleged involvement in people smuggling operations. He was accused of supplying engines and boats to people smugglers, shipping the boats from Turkey and storing them in Germany until they were transported to northern France. Savas was initially identified by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) after an investigation into Kurdish crime boss Hewa Rahimpur. Rahimpur headed a major Europe-wide smuggling ring thought to be behind the movement of more than 10,000 migrants in small boat crossings to the UK. He was arrested in 2022 near Ilford in east London and extradited to Belgium, where he was jailed for 11 years in October 2023, a sentence later increased to 13 years on appeal. Analysis of …