Two new convictions in the UK in the mass grave case
Investigators around the truck where 39 corpses of Vietnamese migrants were found in Grays, UK.
REUTERS / Peter Nicholls
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Two men were convicted of manslaughter on Monday by a London court.
39 Vietnamese migrants including 8 women and 2 teenagers were found suffocated dead in a container in east London in October 2019. The culprits are a truck driver and one of the key organizers of the trafficking.
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The two men face life imprisonment.
The sentence will be pronounced in early January.
Romanian Gheorghe Nica, 48, and
Northern Ireland Eamon Harrison, 24
, have always disputed the charge of manslaughter.
They were found guilty on Monday of the death of 39 people as well as of having taken part in organized trafficking in human beings.
The first as organizer, the second as driver of the heavy goods vehicle which had transported the migrants.
A very lucrative traffic which charged 14,000 euros for crossing the Channel, which had been operating since 2018 and continued after the tragedy.
A UK investigation in Vietnam
This brings the number of UK convictions in this migration drama to 8.
But in this case in addition to the sentences handed down in England, 7 people were convicted in Vietnam, and more than 25 people were
indicted in France
and Belgium.
Investigations and trials are still ongoing.
The bodies of the victims, who died of asphyxiation and hyperthermia, were found on October 23, 2019 in an industrial area near London, locked in a container from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.
At her last moments a young woman of 26, had sent this SMS to her parents: "
I love you very much, I am dying, I can no longer breathe
".
All from a poor region of Vietnam, the victims had passed through Paris in the hope of finding work in the United Kingdom.
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