An Albanian people smuggler has claimed that he shouldn’t be deported from the UK as he does not like Belgian jails.
Adriatik Hysenlika is facing extradition from the UK after being handed a ten-year prison sentence for raking in at least £1million as the head of a trafficking gang that smuggled illegal immigrants into the country in the back of lorries.
The immigrants are thought to have paid £23,000 to Hysenlika, of Willesden, North West London.
Following a request from Belgian authorities, where he had been sentenced for 60 immigration offences, he was arrested by the National Crime Agency last August.
According to court documents, he was the ‘leader of a criminal organisation that is, on a large scale and making use of a vast network’, the Sun report.
However, the 43-year-old, who arrived in Britain in 1998 after claiming he was being persecuted in Albania, has claimed that Belgium prisons are overcrowded and they would breach his human rights.
He also said deportation would deny him access to his two-year-old son who was born here.
This comes after a people smuggler who hid four Vietnamese nationals in the back of his lorry cab was jailed for two and a half years.
People smuggler Adriatik Hysenlika, 43, (pictured) has claimed that he shouldn’t be deported from the UK as he does not like Belgian jails
Following a request from Belgian authorities Hysenlika was arrested by the National Crime Agency last August. Pictured: Belgium police officers
Marian-Marius Radu, who is a 23-year-old Romanian National, will also face the prospect of deportation once he has served his sentence.
Radu was stopped by border police at the Port of Dover in September after officers intercepted four people walking through vehicle lanes.
The Border Forces’ investigations led to the estbalishing that the individuals, who were all Vietnamese nationals, had gotten out of Radu’s three-and-a-half-tonne lorry trailer.
Further footage obtained and reviewed by Home Office investigators showed Radu acting in a suspicous manner at the busy port.
In the footage, Radu can be scanning his surroundings and adjusting his lorry cab’s mirrors in an attempt at avoiding detection.
The footage also revealed that Radu lifted a curtain behind him in the cab of the lorry and directed the four migrants out of the lorry, thinking nobody had noticed.
Following Border Forces being alerted by Radu’s behaviour, he was pulled aside and a search of his lorry was conducted.
