The investigation into the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants in a refrigerated truck continues. A man wanted by the United Kingdom was arrested in Ireland and presented to a court on Tuesday for possible extradition.
Irish police on Monday evening arrested Ronan Hughes, 40, at his home in County Monaghan, on the border with the British province of Northern Ireland. The man is under a European arrest warrant for 39 charges of manslaughter and assistance for illegal immigration.
Five people charged in this case
On 23 October, the corpses of 31 men and 8 women, including two 15-year-old adolescents, were discovered aboard a container in the Grays industrial area, east of London. The container came from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge. During his brief appearance Tuesday in Dublin criminal court, Ronan Hughes remained silent, behind the mask he wore due to the epidemic of new coronavirus.
Judge Paul Burns then informed him that his extradition trial to the United Kingdom, where he is wanted by the courts, would continue on May 1. A total of five people have already been charged in this case. The truck driver, Maurice Robinson, 25, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in London in early April.
Victims from Vietnam
Many of the victims of this tragedy came from a poor region in central Vietnam, which somehow makes a living from fishing, agriculture or industry. Families are going into debt to the tune of thousands of dollars to send one of their own to the United Kingdom, via clandestine channels, in the hope that they will find gainful employment there.
The drama exposed the dangers of illegal immigration, with unscrupulous traffickers taking advantage of the candidates' vulnerability, the latter often ending up in nail bars or illegal cannabis farms in the UK, reduced to a state of semi-slavery.
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