A man living in Hove has admitted being part of a people-smuggling ring which co-ordinated several small boat journeys between mainland Europe and Britain.
Banet Tershana, 51, from Albania, pleaded guilty today (Monday 17 April) to conspiring to facilitate a commission of a breach or attempted breach of immigration law.
He and four others are alleged to have used a small boat to travel to Belgium, collect migrants and bring them back to Margate, in Kent, in a number of smuggling runs last year, according to the National Crime Agency.
Tershana appeared before Judge Steven Coupland at Nottingham Crown Court with his four co-defendants who all denied being part of the people-smuggling conspiracy.
Fellow Albanians Arsen Feci, 44, Klodian Shenaj, 48, and Jetmir Myrtaj, 44, along with Desmond Rice, 46, from Ireland, are due to go on trial at the same court on Monday 24 July.
Tershana, of Harmsworth Crescent, in Hangleton, applied for bail but his application was refused. He was remanded in custody until the end of the trial of his co-defendants.
He was arrested along with Rice, Feci and Shenaj on Tuesday 28 February by National Crime Agency (NCA) officers, with Myrtaj held just over a fortnight later on Wednesday 15 March.
This followed two arrests on Sunday 30 October last year when a man from Basingstoke and a man from Leicester were apprehended when they arrived on the Belgian coast, the NCA said in February.
Twelve migrants, believed to be Albanian nationals and including a child, were taken into custody by the Belgian authorities, with a boat later seized in Brightlingsea, Essex, the NCA said.
Shenaj, of Broxtowe Street, Nottingham, Rice, of Meadowcroft, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and Myrtaj, of no fixed abode, were remanded in custody. Feci, also of Broxtowe Street, Nottingham, remains on bail.
