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HANOI: The father of one of 39 Vietnamese immigrants who suffocated in a truck in Britain said on Tuesday (December 22) that he felt sorry for the two men convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the deaths.
The bodies of men and women were found inside a sealed container near London in October 2019, after suffocating in sweltering temperatures.
Truck driver Eamonn Harrison, 24, of Northern Ireland, and Romanian national Gheorghe Nica, 43, were found guilty of 39 counts of manslaughter, as well as human trafficking, by a London court on Monday .
They are expected to be sentenced in early January and could face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
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Nguyen Dinh Gia, father of victim Nguyen Dinh Luong, 20, expressed his sympathy for the men.
“I think they only did it because they wanted to earn a living. I don’t think it is appropriate to give them a (punishment like) life imprisonment,” he told AFP from a small town in Vietnam’s Ha Tinh province.
“I’m sorry for them.”
Le Minh Tuan, who lost her 30-year-old son, Le Van Ha, praised the court verdict.
“I believe that the decision of the British court that convicted two men of murder is correct,” he told AFP from his village in Nghe An province.
“If they had given air to the migrants inside, those people would not have died. In this case, I think the driver knew it, but he kept driving the truck and did not give air to the people inside.”
The victims were between 15 and 44 years old, and many had come from poor parts of Vietnam and had paid thousands of dollars to make the dangerous journey. (Photo: AFP / Nhac NGUYEN)
The bodies were discovered in the port of Purfleet, in the southeast of England, after being sealed inside the container for at least 12 hours.
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A forensic expert estimated that the air in the trailer would have taken about nine hours to become toxic.
The victims were between 15 and 44 years old.
Prosecutors have said the trapped Vietnamese were unable to obtain a telephone signal inside the container.
Mobile phones recovered from the bodies of the 39 victims showed that they had tried to raise the alarm and left messages for their families while they ran out of air.
The case highlighted the vast and unscrupulous human trafficking networks that span the world.
Many of the victims came from poor areas of Vietnam and were mired in thousands of dollars in debt to smugglers to pay for the dangerous trips.
Monday’s convictions brought to eight the total number of guilty in connection with the case in the UK.
Prosecutors at trial said the human trafficking ring had been motivated by greed and are considering charges against three other people.
