A people smuggler who used his dead mother’s passport in a bid to smuggle women into the UK has been jailed for two years.

And although a court heard Iraqi-born taxi driver Najr Mansour, of The Greenway, Wealdstone, had acted for humanitarian reasons, the Home Office has insisted he rented his mother's identity for profit.

A judge at Chelmsford Crown Court said he accepted Mansour, 47, genuinely believed the women were in danger in Iraq either because of their religion or, in one case because one of the woman was being forced into an arranged marriage.

The court had been told that Mansour, who holds a British passport and has been in this country for 20 years, was paid between £5,000 and £12,000 over an 18-month period, which covered his expenses.

The judge said he accepted Mansour did not profit from his actions.

Mansour was said to have successfully accompanied four women on flights into the UK between August 2011 and March 2012 before he was stopped with the latest two at Stansted Airport on 8 May last year.

He pleaded guilty to two offences of assisting unlawful immigration and to four charges of possessing an identity document with improper intention relating to his late mother's passport.

Prosecutor Nicola May said immigration officials were suspicious at Stansted in May 2013 when a group arrived from Istanbul. Mansour said the older woman was his mother and the other a daughter of a UK friend.

The younger woman was travelling on a genuine passport in the name of Muna Eidan. But both were imposters, said Miss May.

The defendant's mother Dahrhura Hussein had died on May 1, 2007, aged 77.

Inquiries then revealed that Mansour had previously travelled into the UK and showed that he had accompanied four different, unidentified women.

The two women who arrived at Stansted have both applied for asylum in the UK, the judge was told. One had been granted refugee status but that was now under review because she was an Iraqi and not Kuwaiti as she had stated. The other was refused, but has appealed.

Mansour’s counsel, Matthew Sherratt, told the court that Mansour was not part of a large sophisticated organisation.

He said that Mansour acted for humanitarian reasons. "He helped people because he is in this country and he felt that he should. He has gone about it in the wrong way for all the women he has helped."

After Mansour had been sentenced by Recorder Francis Laird QC, Steve Rankin, from the Home Office’s Criminal Investigations Team, said: “Naji Mansour showed a complete disregard for immigration law. Instead of cancelling his mother’s passport, he regarded the document as a potential money-making scheme.

“These were the actions of a cold and calculating criminal, renting out his dead mother’s identity for profit.”

The Crown is pursuing a claim to confiscate Mansour's assets.