The captured Iraqi goat herder is a parable of the British asylum system

Another fugitive, Luqman Jarjis (21), who was convicted at an earlier hearing, was reportedly sent to Aberwystyth after coming into contact with gang members from Birmingham’s large Iraqi Kurdish community.

He had left Iraq as a child, spending time in a Unicef ​​camp in Greece before eventually ending up in a detention camp in Calais, from where he crossed the Channel.

He is now serving a sentence of four years and three months.

Judge Walters said it was “significant” that only one of the three identified masterminds of the operation, Toana Ahmad, 33, from the West Midlands, had been captured.

The others are said to have fled to Iraq.

After arriving in Britain in 2005, Ahmad was placed on indefinite leave and is now serving a 12-year prison sentence.

And what about the people of Aberystwyth?

Fay Yoemans, 54, runs a cake boutique in the small shopping arcade of the Markthal, near the city’s castle.

“It’s very blatant now,” she said. “You see people gathering, waiting, then someone arrives on a bicycle and after a few minutes they all disperse.”

“I’ve been in this store for the last 10 years and over the last two or three years it’s gotten a lot worse.”

‘Drug deals at all hours’

Meanwhile, Dell Edwards watches drug deals going on at all hours of the day as she enjoys a cigarette from her kitchen window in her first floor flat.

The 55-year-old smoothly runs her open palms over each other, indicating the rapid transactions between dealers and buyers.

“Every night I see four or five deals,” she said. “I’m afraid this has made me feel quite insecure about life here.”

Residents of nearby Poplar Road, a well-known hotspot, were too scared to give their names to The Telegraph, but they described how the gang’s tactics changed after a property where they were trading was raided by police.

“A man with a long gray beard appeared on the corner with a bag and handed out the wrappers to other dealers coming back and forth on push bikes,” one person said.

“Sometimes they left a stash in the bushes in the parking lot.

“It became very productive here, especially in the evenings. I once saw a prominent local businesswoman enter the car park with two £20 notes. When she saw me she was embarrassed.”