by A.P.
Boat designed to take eight people but it had 13 people on board including kid
A former Iranian sea captain who risked his life and 12 other asylum seekers by steering them across the Channel has been jailed for four and a half years.
Skipper Fariboz Rakei took a rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) across the Channel, one of the busiest waterways in the world, before they were intercepted by a Border Forder coastal patrol vessel on September 7 last year.
The court heard how the four-metre-long RHIB Rakei was piloting is designed to carry a maximum of eight people but was packed to the gunwales with 13 onboard, including a seven-year-old boy.
