A trial on the discovery of 39 Vietnamese migrants who died in a truck in England in 2019 will open in Belgium, before the Bruges Criminal Court, on December 15 and 16, where twenty-three people will appear, said the federal prosecutor. Wednesday.

One of them, a 45-year-old Vietnamese man, is prosecuted as a "leader of a criminal organization" and faces up to 15 years in prison.

He denies any involvement.

The majority of the 23 defendants are Vietnamese or Belgians of Vietnamese origin.

Six are of Moroccan nationality and one of them is of Armenian origin.

Absence of scruples

They are being prosecuted for “participating in the activities of a criminal organization” for having been involved in human trafficking intended to smuggle migrants into England. According to the prosecution, this traffic, organized from Belgian soil, had connections in France, the Netherlands and Germany. Some defendants continued their activities after the tragedy. On October 23, 2019, the bodies of 39 Vietnamese migrants - 31 men and eight women - were found aboard a container in the Grays industrial area, east London.

The victims died of asphyxiation and hyperthermia due to the heat and lack of oxygen in the enclosed space of the container.

This drama has brought to light the risks to which the clandestinity and the total lack of scruples of certain traffickers push.

The container, in which the migrants (including three minors) had taken place before crossing the Channel, came from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.

This prompted the Belgian justice to open an investigation in parallel with the proceedings initiated in particular in Vietnam and the United Kingdom.

Four men sentenced in Vietnam

As part of this investigation, under the authority of the federal prosecutor's office, a series of searches in Belgium led on May 26, 2020 to thirteen arrests, all followed by an indictment. The other defendants were implicated later. In addition, some suspects arrested abroad have not yet been handed over to Belgian justice and should be tried in a separate procedure, the federal prosecutor was told.

In this case, which also led to the opening of an investigation in France, criminal sanctions have already been imposed by the Vietnamese and British courts.

In the UK, seven men were sentenced in January to terms ranging from three to 27 years in prison.

In Vietnam, four men were sentenced to prison (between two and a half and seven and a half years), and three others to suspended sentences, in September 2020. In Bruges, after the last pleadings scheduled for December 16 , the court will put its judgment under advisement.

It should not be returned for several weeks.

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