People smugglers' fixer has prison term cut

Ujeza Kurmekaj will be deported back to Albania once she has served her sentence

A woman jailed after she admitted helping cross-Channel people smugglers has had her sentence cut after a successful appeal.

Albanian national Ujeza Kurmekaj, who lived in Banbury, Oxfordshire, admitted facilitating illegal immigration last year and was jailed for seven-and-a-half years.

National Crime Agency (NCA) officials detained her in a raid at her home in October 2022, which was attended by the then home secretary Suella Braverman and NCA boss Graeme Biggar.

Court of Appeal judges reduced her sentence to six years after they found a judge proceeded to jail her without commissioning reports into Kurmekaj's circumstances.

Kurmekaj herself was trafficked on a small boat from Albania and a victim of modern slavery having escaped an abusive marriage in her home country, the court heard.

But by the time she was arrested, she had a "high degree of autonomy" and "complete freedom of movement" as she helped the people smugglers, Mr Justice Bryan said.

He said Judge Michael Gledhill KC jailed Kurmekaj without pre-sentence or psychological reports at Oxford Crown Court in November 2023.

An initial 10-year sentence, which was then itself cut by a quarter by Judge Gledhill to take account of Kurmekaj's guilty plea, was excessive, the appeal judges found.

Kurmekaj, who appeared at the Court of Appeal via videolink from HMP Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire, previously appealed an order to deport her following her sentence but that was rejected.

Following her arrest, investigators found she sent instructions on her mobile phone to contacts in France detailing who they should pick up.

After she was jailed, the NCA said she had a "major role as a broker, linking migrants with people smugglers who could transport them on dangerous journeys across the Channel".

Kurmekaj's phone was linked to the people-smuggling operations