What happened when I tracked down the Scorpion, the notorious people smuggler
Within minutes of sitting down in the cafe of a bustling mall in northern Iraq, we saw the “Scorpion” walking towards us, shadowed by his security team.
Barzan Majeed, 38, one of Europe’s most wanted people smugglers, pulled up a red chair under the bright lights as his guards settled for a table just behind.
He looked at ease.
A light blue shirt under a black gilet gave the appearance of an affluent golfer. His nails were perfectly manicured. We couldn’t help but wonder if there was a gun tucked away somewhere.
But at that moment our biggest fear was Majeed suddenly changing his mind about this unlikely meeting.
Here, in front of me, finally, was a migrant smuggler I had been chasing for months.
A man near the top of the Interpol most wanted list for smuggling thousands of people in lorries and small boats across the Channel into Britain.
We had embarked on this search because we wanted to know who sent out one of the first inflatable dinghies that sank in the English Channel in 2019 when there were no life jackets.
We met one of those rescued from the sea – a little girl, Marianne, who was burned by the fuel as it mixed with seawater.
Her dark eyes as she recounted what had happened to her were with me now as I looked into Majeed’s eyes. He had evaded police and prosecutors in Europe and we needed answers.
He blamed the migrants.
“No one forced them to get in the boats, they wanted to, they’re begging the smugglers, please, please, do this for us,” he told me with a cold stare.
“Sometimes the smuggler says, just for the sake of God I will help them. I will do this for them. And then they complain. They say this, that. No, this is not true.”
I was struck during our interview by the absence of remorse, the self-serving excuses: that the police are lying, that he’s just a money man, and that deaths when they happen are somehow the will of God.
When I asked how many people he had helped smuggle to the UK, he said: “Maybe a thousand, maybe 10,000. I don’t know, I didn’t count.”
Majeed seemed bitter that other smugglers he knew who migrated to Britain had been given British passports and were carrying on with their business.
“There’s a smuggler in the UK, he got 170 people into boats last week and he holds a British passport. He’s there working, enjoying a good life, making lots of money, whilst I’m f-----.”
Scorpion has all the appearances of a very wealthy man: he lives in a luxury property, he has cars and designer clothes.
He said his people smuggling days are over, but as he spoke to us, he was scrolling through his mobile phone. He didn’t realise it, but we could see his screen reflected in a polished picture frame on the wall behind. He was scrolling through lists of passport numbers; we learned later that smugglers send these passport numbers to corrupt officials to get visas for migrants.
Colleagues have asked us if we are afraid that he may one day come looking for us: it is a risk, he has extensive criminal contacts in the UK but it’s a risk we weighed up and decided was worth taking.
Martin Clarke, from the National Crime Agency, said they are determined that Majeed should serve the 10-year sentence in Europe he was given in absentia.
Peering into his carefree world in a bright cafe 3,000 miles away, that seems unlikely.
Following this one man’s story showed us the sheer scale of migrant smuggling, the money to be made from it, and how difficult and expensive it is to police.
Sue Mitchell’s podcast series Intrigue: To Catch a Scorpion is on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds
