{"id":743485,"date":"2026-08-20T00:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T00:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/743485\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T00:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T00:32:11","slug":"people-smuggler-exposed-by-bbc-investigation-arrested-and-charged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/743485\/","title":{"rendered":"People smuggler exposed by BBC investigation arrested and charged"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A convicted people smuggler who was found by the BBC to be living in Leicestershire has been arrested and charged with immigration offences.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Twana Jamal Khdir, an Iraqi national who was once described as &#8220;the godfather&#8221; of the French migrant camps, previously served a sentence for people smuggling in France.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Last month, the BBC revealed he was now living in the UK.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The BBC has been told he was arrested on Tuesday near Uppingham in a joint operation led by the Midlands Criminal Financial Investigations team, with the support of Leicestershire Police.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He was charged by the Crown Prosecution Service and appeared at Leicester Magistrates&#8217; Court on Wednesday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He pleaded guilty to entering the UK without valid entry clearance, but not guilty to seeking to obtain leave to enter or remain by deceptive means. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He has been remanded in custody and will next appear at Leicester Crown Court on 5 October.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Khdir was given a five-year jail sentence in France in 2016, where authorities described him as one of the most successful people smugglers ever caught.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Prosecutors said the Iraqi Kurd, aged 36 at the time, had earned up to \u00a3100,000 a week for moving illegal immigrants across the Channel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A convicted people smuggler who was found by the BBC to be living in Leicestershire has been arrested&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-743485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}