Almost a year after the appalling discovery of 39 Vietnamese migrants dead in a refrigerated truck in England, four men are on trial from Monday, October 5 in London, during the first trial in the United Kingdom in this case.
The two main suspects, the driver of the truck in which the bodies were found and a Northern Irishman suspected of having organized the movement of the drivers involved in the traffic, have pleaded guilty and will be the subject of a subsequent hearing. to determine their sentence.
The four men whose trial opens at the Old Bailey Criminal Court in London, aged 23 to 43, are being prosecuted for manslaughter or for aiding illegal immigration.
They contest the offenses with which they are accused.
On October 23, 2019, the bodies of 31 men and 8 women, including two 15-year-old teenagers, were found aboard a container in the Grays industrial area, east London.
The container came from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.
A cry for help
Among the victims, Pham Thi Tra My, 26, had sent a chilling SMS to his relatives, a few hours before the discovery of the bodies: "Mum, dad, I love you very much. I am dying, I cannot breathe".
Many of the victims of this tragedy were from a poor region in central Vietnam, where 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 has shed light on the dangers of illegal immigration, with unscrupulous traffickers taking advantage of applicants' vulnerabilities, the latter often ending up in nail bars or illegal cannabis farms in the UK reduced to a state of semi-slavery.
Seven people were sentenced on September 15 in Vietnam for their role in trafficking, the first criminal sanctions pronounced in this case.
Research beyond UK borders
A court in Ha Tinh province, located in the center of the country, handed down four Vietnamese between the ages of 26 and 36, sentences ranging from two and a half to seven and a half years in detention.
They were found guilty of participating to varying degrees in "the organization of the smuggling of migrants".
Three others were given suspended prison terms.
Investigations were also opened in France and Belgium, 13 suspects were charged in each of the two countries.
They had been arrested during a vast international police operation, coordinated by the judicial cooperation body Eurojust.
The British government, which made post-Brexit immigration control a hobbyhorse, recently faced a record number of attempts to cross the Channel from France, in often sketchy boats, using smugglers .
Home Secretary Priti Patel announced on Sunday a major overhaul of the UK asylum system, without specifying the details.
Proposals such as detaining applicants on old ferries, even on disused platforms in the North Sea or on the British Isles in the middle of the Atlantic have been mentioned by the press.
With AFP
The summary of the week
France 24 invites you to come back to the news that marked the week
I subscribe
Take international news everywhere with you!
Download the France 24 application
google-play-badge_FR