He is known as Scorpion, although his real name is Barzan Majeed, and was the most wanted human trafficker in all of Europe. Now the 38-year-old Iraqi may have finished enriching himself at the expense of migrants. The Kurdish security forces, in fact, announced that they had arrested him in Sulaymaniyah, a city of 670 thousand inhabitants in the Iraqi Kurdistan region not far from the border with Iran.
According to the Kurdistan24 broadcaster, Scorpion’s arrest was carried out on Sunday in a joint operation by the Iraqi secret services and Interpol. The news was announced by the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Recently the BBC managed to interview him in a shopping center in Iraq. It was he, with his gang, who controlled most of the people smuggling that crossed the Channel over the last ten years. Scorpion himself said he did not know precisely how many people he brought to Europe: «Maybe a thousand, maybe 10 thousand. I don’t know, I didn’t count them.”
He was 20 years old in 2006 when he arrived in England illegally in the back of a lorry. Despite being refused leave to remain a year later, he remained in the UK for several years, ending up in prison for weapons and drugs-related offences. In 2015 he was expelled and some time later he began to “work” with immigrants, an activity that he inherited from his older brother, who was serving a sentence in Belgium. In just a few years Majeed, who became legendary with the name Scorpion, has built a very profitable business by leading one of the main organizations that controls illegal immigration in central Europe.
Scorpion had been wanted for two years after being sentenced, in Belgium, to 10 years in prison in absentia and a fine of 968 thousand euros.
