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Four human smugglers convicted of killing 39 people from Vietnam who died in the back of a container truck as it was shipped to England were sentenced on Friday (local time) to between 13 and 27 years in prison.
The victims, aged between 15 and 44, were found in October 2019 inside a refrigerated container that had traveled by ferry from Belgium to the port of Purfleet, in eastern England.
The migrants had paid human smugglers thousands of dollars to take them on risky journeys to what they hoped would be a better life abroad.
Instead, Judge Nigel Sweeney said, “they all died in what must have been an excruciatingly painful death” from suffocation in the airtight container.
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The judge sentenced the 43-year-old Romanian mechanic Gheorghe Nica, described by prosecutors as the smuggling ringleader, to 27 years. Northern Ireland truck driver Eamonn Harrison, 24, who was driving the container to the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, received an 18-year sentence.
AP
Police officers attend the scene after a truck was found to contain bodies in southern England in October 2019.
Truck driver Maurice Robinson, 26, who picked up the container in England, was sentenced to 13 years and four months in prison, while the head of the trucking company, Ronan Hughes, 41, was jailed for 20 years.
Nica and Harrison were convicted last month after a 10-week trial. Hughes and Robinson had pleaded guilty to human smuggling and manslaughter.
Three other members of the gang received shorter sentences.
Prosecutors said all of the suspects were part of a gang that charged around £ 13,000 (NZ $ 24,777) per person to transport migrants in trailers through the Channel Tunnel or by boat.
Sweeney said it was a “sophisticated, long-running and profitable” criminal conspiracy.
Aaron Chown / AP
Detective Chief Inspector Daniel Stoten, the lead investigating officer on the case, says the victims “left families, memories and homes in search of a false promise of something better.”
Jurors heard heartbreaking evidence about the last hours of the victims, who tried to call the Vietnam emergency number for help when the air in the container ran out. When they couldn’t get a mobile phone signal, some recorded goodbye messages to their families.
The trapped migrants, which included a bricklayer, a restaurant worker, a nail bar technician, a budding beautician and a college graduate, used a metal pole to try to pierce the roof of the reefer container, but only succeeded in denting it.
Detective Chief Inspector Daniel Stoten, the lead investigating officer on the case, said the victims “left families, memories and homes in search of a false promise of something better.”
“Instead, they died, in an unimaginable way, due to the utter greed of these criminals,” he said.
