I am sitting in a shopping mall in Iraq, face-to-face with one of Europe’s most notorious people-smugglers. His name is Barzan Majeed, and he is wanted by police forces in several countries, including the UK. Over the course of our conversation - both here and the next day at his office - he says he does not know how many migrants he has transported across the English Channel. “Maybe a thousand, maybe 10,000. I don’t know, I didn’t count.” The meeting is the culmination of what had seemed like an impossible task a few months earlier. Together with Rob Lawrie,...
