European Court Farce Frees People Smuggler

If the EU and the European Court can damage Britain and insult the British people - that's exactly what they'll do. The latest example of this 'golden rule' of European/UK relations is the way a European human rights ruling has let free the leader of the gang which 'allegedly' shipped 10,000 illegal immigrants across the Channel.

The suspect, named only as Dirk P in court papers, was discovered by armed police hiding in a hayloft at his farm in Lotte, Germany, as they targeted a gang alleged to be running the migrant flotilla from the French coast.

The 41-year-old was arrested in March — but has vanished thanks to European Union human rights laws.

It emerged this week that the German authorities were forced to free him when a court halted his extradition to Belgium for questioning over human smuggling offences.

Lawyers used a loophole in EU laws to win him freedom at the June hearing, arguing that because Belgian prisons are overcrowded, a 'persecuted person' extradited there may face a 'violation' of his human rights.

Released from remand, 'Dirk' - widely belieived in fact to be Albanian - has now disappeared.

'We have no longer any legal way of monitoring his whereabouts,' a spokesman for the attorney general's office covering Lotte in Germany said this week. 

'He is at large now.' That means he will be missing from a trial of 21 suspects, including some based in Britain, accused of 'criminal involvement' in human trafficking across the Channel, set to begin in Bruges on Monday. The case against him will be heard in his absence.

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