Iraqi Kurdistan is an autonomous region in northern Iraq. This is where several victims of the sinking of November 24 come from. It is also there that the starting point of several channels of smugglers is. To contact them, all you need is a smartphone and the Facebook application. Private groups, quickly identifiable, offer to transport you to Europe, as would travel agencies. The names of their internet pages are evocative and unambiguous: “Your door to Europe” or “Emigration is calling you”. We see the Eiffel Tower or the British flag in profile photo.
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To approach the managers of these pages, the Investigation Unit of Radio France created a fake Facebook account in the name of Mohamed, 25, from Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. We then used a translator on site. He wrote our messages and made calls with an Iraqi SIM card. We thus managed to get in touch with smugglers.
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7,500 euros for a visa
First step: via Facebook’s private messaging (Messenger), we contacted an Arabic-speaking tout. He is initially suspicious, demanding details about our age, our place of residence and our migration plan. He then asks that we leave him a voicemail message to verify that we are indeed a young Kurdish. Our translator sends him a short message, explaining that he wants to go to Great Britain to join his cousin. He then receives this response: “Hi my brother. At the moment, no ship for Great Britain. I can help you to go to Italy, Germany or Spain. Where you want.” We ask him in writing “Why not Great Britain?”, he answers us: “It’s too closely watched right now.” The tout then offers us a visa for Spain at 7,500 euros.
PHOTO 7 // Screenshot of the discussion with an Arabic-speaking smuggler, Radio France investigation unit
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Here is the transcript of our discussions:
- Great Britain is not possible, it is too closely watched, too many police.
- Alright my brother. If I want to go to Italy from Erbil, what would be the way?
- My brother, I am offering you a visa for Spain for 7,500 euros.
We answer “Okay”. The tout then gives us the number of a smuggler in Turkey, who soon sends us this message in Arabic, in a hollow voice: “For your visa, I would need your employment contract which proves that you are well employed. You can send me a fake. I also need a bank statement. The visa costs 7,500 euros. You leave the money in a bureau de change in Erbil. ”
The courier does not want to be paid by hand, nor to receive a bank transfer. Everything is done through a guarantee system, called the “Hawala” where the “OK system”. “Families deposit money in an office”, explains Bilal, a young Iraqi Kurdish who managed to cross to England last January after crossing the Channel by boat. “Once the migrant has arrived at his destination, the office gives the money to the smuggler or to a relative of the smuggler, he explains to us. This is called the OK system. It’s a guarantee. ”
The “royal road”
We are intrigued by this proposal to purchase a visa for Spain. European visas are generally almost impossible to obtain for Iraqis, if one sticks to the legal procedures. But a very good Kurdish connoisseur of these channels, whom we met, explained to us that in certain consulates in Erbil, it is possible to obtain them illegally. “If you are Iraqi and you want to get a visa for Europe, either you pay someone who will bribe an official in the consulates in Erbil”, he tells us, “Or you manage to get an invitation letter from a family in Europe. You can buy that too. ”, explains this Kurdish who wishes to remain anonymous for security reasons.
So that’s what the 7,500 euros claimed by the smuggler are used for. And we also received visa offers for Romania and Albania on Facebook, at about the same price. Traveling on an illegally obtained visa is what can be called the “royal road”. It concerns candidates for exile who have a certain standard of living, a passport, and who present well. For the others, you have to take the road and cross Europe, as Bilal, the young Iraqi Kurd did. “I left Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan as far as Turkey”, he says from London. “Then Greece. Albania. Kosovo. Serbia. Bosnia. Croatia. Slovenia. Italy. France and the UK. ”
No great chefs
Three grueling years of traveling through Europe. Bilal paid a first smuggler 900 euros to go from Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey. Then at each pivotal stage of his journey, he called on a new network. To find the necessary money, he happened to stay several months in a country and work illegally. These smuggling networks have a horizontal organization, unlike drug trafficking which is more pyramidal, with a boss, a cartel leader.
“In these channels, a first network of smugglers operates between Iraq and Turkey. Then another between Turkey and Greece ”, explains our Kurdish source cited above. “Then there is a third network between Italy and France. And finally the fourth between France and Great Britain. Often, it is the Kurds who rule them, but there is not necessarily a great chief who controls everything. ” There is not necessarily a great leader but several heads of networks who each lead one end of the industry. And it’s very lucrative. Between Erbil and England, migrants spend on average, Bilal explains, between 10,000 and 30,000 dollars.
Investigation by Geraldine Hallot, investigation unit of Radio France.