How British FBI use secret weapon in Bulgaria to sabotage people smugglers

WHEN Tunisian Mohammed Ali chose to cross into Europe for “money and a better life”, his route took him through the continent’s wild frontier.

This is the rugged Balkan landscape of the Turkish border with Bulgaria on the continent’s south eastern edge.

And despite a 10ft fence topped with razor wire, drones patrolling the skies and police swarming the area, the imposing security is not impenetrable — which is why it is known as “Europe’s gateway”.

But now Britain has sent a special weapon against the people-smugglers, whose human cargo often make it to the UK via dinghies — Adelethe rubber-sniffing dog.

The five-year-old German short-haired pointer, patrolling with a Union Jack flag on her collar, can also detect cash, drugs and weapons.

A Bulgarian National Customs Agency spokesman told The Sun that when Adele detects contraband, “she does not bark or scratch, but freezes in place. It’s like saying, ‘Problem!’.”

Meanwhile, Mohammed, 18, a barber by trade, candidly told me how he had travelled to trafficking hub Istanbul to arrange to be smuggled into the EU.

“I took a £200 flight from Tunisia to Turkeywhich Tunisians can enter without a visa,” he told me at the Harmanli migrant camp, around 30 miles from the border.

“Then I paid a smuggler around £2,000 to get me over the border fence. It was night time and we used ladders to get over the wire. We didn’t see any police.

“Now I’d like to live in Paris. UK is also very good.”

It’s not just people that ­traffickers spirit into Bulgaria. The rubber dinghies that have been used to ferry more than 36,000 migrants to the UK this year also pass this way.

They are often made in Turkish backstreet factories with materials imported from Chinathen stacked in lorries and falsely labelled as tarpaulins. Outboard motors are usually smuggled separately.

Working with our National Crime Agency, Bulgarian customs have seized 201 inflatable boats and 121 outboard motors since May 2023.

NCA Director of Intelligence Adrian Matthews has called ­Bulgaria “a key location on the supply route” for cross-Channel smuggling networks.
Besides Adele, the UK has also paid for high-tech scanners to detect the inflatables hidden in lorries.

So far this year, 82 ­dinghies have been discovered, most at Kapitan Andreevo, the world’s second-busiest border crossing, where streams of traffic exit Turkey for Bulgaria.

Customs operations chief Krasimir Chapkanov told of a bust in August when some 20 dinghies were declared as ­tarpaulins in a bid to cheat the X-ray machines.

He said: “After opening the first package we discovered inflatable rubber boats with rigid sides and reinforced bottoms.

“They have no documents, no certificates, no warranties. They are made solely for smuggling migrants across the Channel.”

Last week I visited the tumbledown Bulgarian village of Shtit, population 150, set in vineyards and farmland close to the razor-wire border fence.

In the isolated hamlet’s only cafe, grandmother-of-two Dimitrina ­Ivanova, 50, told me: “A while ago I saw a group of 20 migrants.

“They were looking for the road to [Bulgarian capital] Sofia. The border police came immediately and stopped them.

“Most people in the village are over 60 and live alone. At night they hear the dogs barking and become afraid. We see the drones in the sky and it’s reassuring.”

Buzz of a drone

Nearby, an off-duty border guard told me: “The smugglers use ­ladders to get migrants over the fence or use cutters to make holes for people to climb through.

“We’re having big success stopping migrants here. We’re hearing intelligence that they are preferring to go via Greece and Albania and on to western Europe.”

In the nearby village of Studena, barman Mario Gochev, 35, said: “I’ve seen migrants on their own or in small groups.

“They don’t want to stay around here — they’re heading for western Europe.”

He added: “I support what the local migrant-hunters are doing. I agree with them.”

Stopping our hire car a ploughed field away from the looming border fence, the heavy security here was soon evident.

Sun photographer Darren Fletcher and I had barely got out of the car when the buzz of a drone could be heard overhead.

Soon it was hovering in view above us, and remained there until we got in the car and left.

I paid a smuggler around £2,000 to get me over the border fence. It was night time and we used ladders to get over the wire. We didn’t see any police.

Mohammed Ali

We had attracted the attention of border guards, and an SUV carrying heavy-set men in civvies caught up with us and demanded to see our passports and Press cards before allowing us to leave.

In the first nine months of this year more than 37,000 migrants entered the EU via the Eastern Mediterranean route, which includes Bulgaria. That’s a fall of 22 per cent on the same period in 2024.

One such migrant is Palestinian refugee Fawzy Younes, 21. He has managed to secure a job in a car wash to pay rent at a flat and quit the migrant camp.

Leaving behind his parents and five siblings in Rafah in the Gaza Strip a year ago, he fled first to Egyptthen Turkey before negotiating the fortified border without the help of a trafficker.

“Normally it’s £1,500 with a smuggler but I did it on my own,” he said with an up-and-over hand ­gesture when asked about the fence.

He added: “I was scared the ­border police would catch me.”

Of the other migrants at the nearby camp, he revealed: “Many want to go to London because of the English language. Germany is also popular.”

Sniffer dog Adele and her ­Bulgarian handlers are doubtless doing sterling work on this ­smugglers’ superhighway.

Yet last week hundreds made the perilous Channel crossing in a ­flotilla of flimsy dinghies.

Proof that the greedy criminal masterminds behind the smuggling racket are still one step ahead.