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Victims of an alleged human smuggling ring desperately called for the doors of a truck container to be opened before all 39 suffocated, a court has heard.
A year ago this month, the men, women and children, aged 15 to 44, were found dead in the trailer after it was shipped from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge to Purfleet in Essex.
In a phone message from one of the victims, “open, open” calls were heard in the background, the Old Bailey heard.
Everyone in the container suffocated at temperatures as high as 38.5 degrees Celsius in the dark interior, the jury was told. Some of the victims realized that others had already died before they all died, the calls revealed.
On Tuesday, jurors heard the trailer being loaded onto the ferry in Zeebrugge at 3 p.m. on October 22 last year. The ferry, the Clementine, departed 36 minutes later with the container stowed on the weather deck.
At 6.25pm, a young Vietnamese woman took a series of selfies on her phone that showed the sweltering conditions inside.
For the next two hours, the occupants tried to make phone calls, and one called the emergency number of the Vietnamese police, without success.
In a recorded message to his family, Nguyen Tho Tuan (25) said: “I’m sorry. I can’t take care of you. Sorry. Sorry. I can’t breathe. I want to go back to my family. Have a good life. “
In another mobile phone recording at 20:02, Nguyen Dinh Luong (20) said: “I can’t breathe. Sorry, I have to go now.”
In the background a voice could be heard saying: “Let’s all go. Open, open. “In another phone recording two minutes later, the same victim said,” I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. “
Between 10:00 pm and 10:30 pm, the carbon dioxide in the trailer was believed to have reached the “toxic threshold,” the court heard.
Eamonn Harrison (23) of Mayobridge, Co Down, who had left the trailer in Zeebrugge, has denied 39 counts of involuntary manslaughter along with alleged key organizer, Gheorghe Nica (43), of Basildon in Essex.
Harrison, Co Armagh truck driver Christopher Kennedy (24), and Birmingham’s Valentin Calota (37) have denied being part of a broader human trafficking conspiracy, which Nica has admitted.
The trial continues.
– Guardian
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