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Albanian fisherman admits smuggling 17 migrants across the Channel to Dorset on a yacht from France, and faces sentencing next month

Eno Gajda, the Albanian fisherman who pleaded guilty at Bournemouth Crown Court to smuggling 17 migrants — including a boy — across the Channel aboard a 40ft yacht.
Eno Gajda, the Albanian fisherman who pleaded guilty at Bournemouth Crown Court to smuggling 17 migrants — including a boy — across the Channel aboard a 40ft yacht.

Eno Gajda, a 58-year-old Albanian fisherman, pleaded guilty at Bournemouth Crown Court on Monday to facilitating illegal immigration after captaining a 40ft yacht — carrying 16 Albanian men and one boy — through one of the planet's most heavily trafficked stretches of water. Border Security Command officers tracked the vessel from Dielette, France, intercepted it off the Dorset coast, and brought it into Portland Marina under escort. Gajda is to be sentenced at Bournemouth Crown Court on November 18.

Among those aboard was a minor — one of 17 passengers packed onto the 40ft yacht for the hazardous open-sea passage.

NCA Branch Commander Andy Tickner called it a 'brazen attempt' and warned that navigating the Channel put many lives at risk.

The NCA says it is devoting greater resources to dismantling smuggling networks than at any previous point, with seizures, arrests and disruptions all on the rise.

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