A SMUGGLING ring centred on the North-East which brought illegal Asian immigrants into Britain hidden in vans has been smashed by police.

Three members of the gang who brought the immigrants into Britain hidden among crisp packets, toilet rolls and mineral water, were jailed yesterday at Newcastle Crown Court.

The trio was snared after the National Crime Squad carried out undercover surveillance operations tracking two of the men as they crossed the Channel by ferry to pick up the illegal immigrants from Europe.

The ringleader, Jasvir Singh Bains, 35, of Taylor Road, Wolverhampton, and two co-accused Gary Harland, 25, of DeWaldon Terrace, and Gary Hall, 30, of Castle Terrace, both Ashington, Northumberland, admitted conspiracy to facilitate illegal immigration.

The vans used in the smuggling were initially hired on Tyneside by Hall.

The court was told that Bains recruited his two colleagues through a criminal network linking the West Midlands with the North-East, and that Hall was the van driver on two occasions and Harland his accomplice on one trip.

Hall and Harland travelled from the North-East to meet Bains before the two Northumberland men crossed from Dover to Calais and then drove to Ghent, in Belgium, to pick up the immigrants before returning to England. The immigrants were then collected by Bains who took them to a safe house in the Southall area of west London.

Two of the trips were monitored by National Crime Squad officers during a year-long operation. The men were arrested in April 1999.

Bains, a former market trader, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years for his part in the smuggling and both Harland and Hall sentenced to 18 months each.

After the hearing, Detective Chief Inspector Ian Holmes, of the National Crime Squad, said: ''The operation led to the successful dismantlement of a major supply route of illegal immigrants from the Indian sub-continent into the UK. It was controlled and run by organised crime and basic profiting from human misery.''

Mr Holmes said ringleaders could make up to £2,000 clear profit per person thye smuggled in, while others involved with driving and helping could have been making £200 a person smuggled in.