A taxi driver has avoided jail after being convicted for his role in a major conspiracy to smuggle Vietnamese migrants into the UK in the back of lorries.

Habib Behsodi, from Chatham, was involved in picking up people and driving them to the West Midlands, as well as collecting cash payments.

Behsodi, 41, of Rochester Street, helped 33-year-old Hai Xuan Le, a Vietnamese national based in Birmingham, orchestrate crossings using trucks between August and September 2020.

Phone evidence showed that Le was part of a wider network of people smugglers, transporting people illegally from Vietnam to the UK.

Some of those making the trip are thought to have relied on a form of debt bondage to fund part or all of their journey, paying back the cost through working illegally in the UK or working in criminal enterprises including cannabis farms.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) was able to evidence at least seven separate attempts to move migrants between August 19 and September 4 involving Le.

The operation was masterminded from his flat above a nail bar in Birmingham.

Le would use a range of different phone numbers, social media accounts and pseudonyms to arrange for people to be transported to pre-arranged pick up points in Europe and loaded onto HGVs in France, Belgium or the Netherlands, using a complicit transport network.

The trucks, some of which were refrigerated, would then cross by ferry or the Channel Tunnel to Kent, where arrangements would be made to collect those inside.

On some occasions Le himself would travel down to accompany migrants, sometimes using genuine and unwitting taxi companies to travel back to the Midlands after collection.

Mobile phone data analysis was used by the NCA to map his journeys, corresponding with the movements of migrants’ phones.

He initially gave the name of Ho Sy Quoc, but through working with the authorities in Vietnam the NCA were able to establish his true identity.

Le was arrested at his home address by the NCA in September 2021, having tried to flee the property when he saw officers arrive.

Behsodi was arrested around the same time.

After a six-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court, both men were found guilty of conspiring to facilitate illegal immigration.

At their sentencing hearing today, Kelly Brocklehurst, prosecuting, said: “The movement of immigrants was something of a conveyor belt.

“As one set of migrants were either turned back in a failed attempt, or en route in a successful attempt, communications in evidence suggested that yet others were being queued up by the conspirators, in further arrangements to facilitate unlawful immigration.

“The method of transportation involved taking migrants from a safe house in Europe, often it seems by taxi, to meet up with some form of HGV.”

Behsodi, a married father of a three-year-old daughter, was originally from Afghanistan but had come to the UK after persecution by the Taliban regime, the judge heard.

Barrister Danielle Barden, in mitigation, said he had fled torture, including “having boiling water poured over him by Taliban officers”.

Judge Dean Kershaw responded to that mitigation, saying: “He came here essentially as an asylum seeker.

“Then involved himself in this, knowing what he went through and then didn’t care as to what others might be going through.”

Ms Barden, accepting her client “should have known better”, urged the judge to suspend Behsodi’s jail term, so he could “make recompense”.

He told Behsodi: “Your role was like a courier, but you were a courier of individuals who were vulnerable, and brought in for profit.

“These people were treated as commodities – but they were people, human beings.”

Behsodi, he said, “played a significant role”, and was “not just on the periphery”, or an individual who – as the cab driver himself had claimed – had made “an honest mistake”.

The judge added Behsodi had been lured by a “high level of financial gain”, as proven by the find of a “huge amount of cash” stashed in his kitchen.

Mr Kershaw also said the driver had “shown no remorse” and seemed only to be regretting having “got caught”.

But the judge agreed to suspend Behsodi’s two-year prison sentence for 24 months, with probation work, including 200 hours of community service, after agreeing that jailing the household bread-winner would have a “huge impact” on his wife and young daughter.

“I am also satisfied your house would be taken away by the bank,” he told Behsodi – who appeared close to tears.

Behsodi, through an Afghan interpreter, replied he would “solemnly affirm” to prove his “good character”.

“These people were treated as commodities – but they were people, human beings...”

Le will be sentenced tomorrow.

A third man, Karzan Mohammed, 33, from Bolton, was found not guilty.

NCA Branch Commander Mick Pope said: "These two men were part of a people smuggling network who were not just breaching UK border security but also risking the lives of those they transported.

"One text message exchange we recovered as part of this investigation shows migrants being referred to as ‘pork’ – which I think shows the callous nature of those involved.

"For them, the people they were transporting were a just a commodity from which they could profit.

"We have seen how this kind of criminality can so easily lead to loss of life, which is why we are doing all we can to target and dismantle the criminal networks involved."