It was a tragedy that sent shockwaves across Europe as a family drowned trying to cross the Channel, with the body of their toddler son Artin Iran-Nejad later washing ashore some 700 miles away.
But now the suspected kingpin trafficker who is thought to have organised the deadly trip has been arrested.
A French and British undercover police operation led to the 36-year-old Iranian-Kurd’s capture at his spacious home in Denmark.
The arrest came just hours before he attempted to flee Europe with his wife and two children to escape justice.
The detainee is a suspected master criminal, believed to have organised hundreds of illegal migrant boat crossings in the past two years.
He was preparing to drive his car secretly from Denmark via Turkey to Iran, before the net closed in on him in a dawn raid last month.
Artin Iran-Nejad (pictured) tragically drowned alongside his family while trying to cross the English Channel before washing up on a beach some 700 miles away
It comes after Iranian construction worker Rasoul Iran-Nejad, 35, his wife Shiva Mohammad Panahi, 35, along with children Anita, nine, Armin, six, and 15-month-old Artin drowned off the coast of Dunkirk last October.
Their boat had capsized, with two other migrants also dying, and 15 surviving. Four of the Iran-Nejad family’s bodies were recovered from the water – but Artin was swept off to sea.
His body was found in a blue overall and life jacket by fishermen in Norway on New Year’s Day, but was not identified until June this year.
Last night, a British source said: ‘We were about to lose this trafficker. He planned to leave Denmark and return to his home country of Iran.
'A French arrest warrant on him had been issued and he knew things were getting hot for him in France and Europe.
‘We suspect he planned to continue, even expand, his trafficking activities, buying boats, outboards and organising the migrant crossings, on his return to Iran. That is why we had to find him. He had to be stopped.’
A search for the suspect began a year ago before the drowning of Artin and his family.
The Iranian-Kurd was believed to be a central cog in one of the biggest Channel boat-trafficking operations with tentacles stretching back to Iran.
A sophisticated undercover surveillance operation by French
