The leader of an Albanian gang who ran a multi-million pound operation smuggling fellow Albanians into Britain was jailed for eight years today.
Mhill Sokoli (35) had faced up to 15 years behind bars. Another 24 gang members were jailed for between three and eight years.
The court in Dendermonde, north-west of Brussels, estimated that the gang had smuggled as many as 10,000 illegal immigrants from eastern Europe into Britain from 2001 to 2002 using boats and trucks from Zeebrugge.
The gang charged between &8364;400 and &8364;3,000 per person. AP