British 'death lorry' accomplices jailed in Belgium

  Xinhua News Agency, Brussels, January 19 (Reporter Pan Geping) The Belgian District Court of Bruges issued a verdict on the 19th and sentenced 20 accomplices in the 2019 Essex truck massacre in the United Kingdom to 1 to 15 years in prison.

Among them, Vu Wenhong, a Vietnamese citizen with the heaviest sentence, was also fined 920,000 euros, and another 2.3 million euros of property was confiscated.

  On October 23, 2019, British police found 39 bodies in a container truck in an industrial park in Essex, southeastern England, and later confirmed that the victims were all Vietnamese citizens.

The investigation found that the container came from Belgium.

  Since then, the Belgian police have discovered two dens in the Anderlecht region where the illegal immigrants had been hidden.

In May 2020, the police successfully dismantled a smuggling gang headed by Wu Wenhong, which transported at least 130 illegal immigrants to the UK.

  Through the cooperation of many countries, some important members of this gang that has long used the English Channel to smuggle illegal immigrants and make huge profits have been arrested one after another.

Britain has sentenced four people involved in the case in January 2021 to prison terms ranging from 13 years and 4 months to 27 years.

In addition, at least four suspects involved in the case were sentenced in Vietnam in September 2020 for "planning and conducting illegal immigration brokering."