Two years’ jail for each of the 39 lives they took
Three NI men and a Romanian accomplice get sentences totalling 78 years for migrant deaths
FOUR people smugglers — including three from Northern Ireland — have been jailed for a total of 78 years for the manslaughter of 39 migrants found dead in a lorry trailer.
Ronan Hughes (41), from Co Armagh, and Gheorghe Nica (43), who played “leading roles” in the smuggling conspiracy, were jailed for 20 and 27 years respectively.
Lorry drivers Eamonn Harrison (24), from Co Down, and Maurice Robinson (26), from Co Armagh, were in turn sentenced to 18 years and 13 years and four months. The 78 year total equates to two years for each life lost in the 2019 tragedy.
THE seven men jailed for a people-smuggling plot that led to the deaths of 39 migrants who suffocated in an air-tight trailer each played distinct roles in the conspiracy.
Northern Ireland men Ronan Hughes (41), Eamonn Harrison (24), and Maurice Robinson (26), plus Gheorghe Nica (43) were sentenced at the Old Bailey yesterday for the tragedy which happened on October 23 2019.
Also jailed were Christopher Kennedy (24), from Co Armagh, and Valentin Calota (38) and Alexandru-ovidiu Hanga (28).
The court heard how British-romanian Nica recruited and paid the drivers in the Romanian community to collected migrants once they reached the UK and drop them at safe houses.
The lorry driver and mechanic knew the lorry yards in Essex well and could easily identify a quiet spot to unload migrants. Nica, a father of three, liaised with an individual named “Fong” who was at the top of the conspiracy — delivering large sums of cash from him to haulage boss Hughes.
Phone evidence disclosed he was in touch with Robinson, from Laurelvale in Co Armagh — the driver who found the bodies — both before and after he made the grim discovery.
Jailing him for 27 years, Mr Justice Sweeney remarked: “I am sure (Nica) was well rewarded for his overall role.”
Logistics boss Hughes, also from Co Armagh, and his fleet of lorries played a “pivotal” role in the conspiracy, the court heard, and received £3,000 cash per migrant successfully transported, from which the individual driver was also paid.
Jailing him for 20 years, Mr Justice Sweeney said: “Albeit that Hughes was not, I accept, at the very top of the conspiracy, his role was clearly a pivotal one.”
Harrison, from Mayobridge in Co Down, was pulled into the scheme as a means of paying off a large debt he owed to Hughes as a result of a lorry accident in Germany while he was drunk driving.
He was described as the “man on the continent” and it was Harrison who picked up migrants and took them in trailers to Zeebrugge in Belgium to be shipped to the UK.
In the weeks before the tragedy he had done little other haulage work, being paid a flat fee of €500 (£445) per trip.
Handing him 18 years’ imprisonment, Mr Justice Sweeney accepted Harrison was the youngest defendant and that he was immature, with ADHD, depression and “clear signs of alcoholism”.
Mr Justice Sweeney said Harrison “lived a lonely life on the road, sleeping in his cab”, and noted submissions by Harrison’s barrister that there was a distinction between involvement to pay off a debt and involvement purely for profit.
Robinson became involved in late 2018 or early 2019 and received £25,000 for a previous run from Belgium to the UK, as well as taking part in an aborted run of migrants due to be collected from the Netherlands.
On the day the bodies were discovered, his only role was collecting the trailer from Purfleet,
for a fee of £500. He had been instructed by Hughes to “give them air quickly, don’t let them out”.
When he opened the doors a cloud of vapour escaped the trailer and Robinson saw that all the migrants were dead. But rather than raising the alarm immediately, he exchanged a series of calls with Hughes and Nica.
Some 23 minutes later, he rang 999 to report finding “loads” of migrants lying on the ground.
He was sentenced to 13 years and four months.
Robinson, a father of twins, admitted the charges and Mr Justice Sweeney remarked: “Notwithstanding the lies that he told in interview, (Robinson) has genuine regret and remorse.”
Kennedy was not involved in the fatal journey, but helped in three other transportations over the previous month.
He was described by the prosecution as an “integral part” of Hughes’ human trafficking team and was jailed for seven years for his part in the conspiracy.
Hanga also admitted his role in the enterprise on the basis that he had collected a number of migrants from a drop-off point and driven them to a safe house in Dulwich a few weeks before the tragedy.
Mr Justice Sweeney noted that newlywed Hanga got involved because he felt “beholden” to Nica, adding Nica was “not the sort of person to say ‘no’ to”.
He was jailed for three years, but the judge remarked he had shown “genuine remorse”.
Calota was also pulled into the scheme by Nica, driving just one vanload of migrants from Orsett in Essex to London on October 18 2019. He received £700 plus expenses for his part in the operation, with the journey lasting for no more than an hour.
The court heard Calota had been an acquaintance of Nica, moving to Grays in 2017, that he had found it difficult to make a living in the UK and was living in near poverty. He was jailed for four and a half years.
Yesterday and during the trial, details of the smuggling operation — and previous incidents — were outlined.
The court had heard the operation was long-running and profitable, with the smugglers standing to make more than a million pounds in October 2019 alone.
A total of seven smuggling trips were identified between May 2018 and October 23 2019, although the court heard that there were likely to have been more.
Migrants would board lorries at a remote location on the continent to be transported to Britain where they would be picked up by a fleet of smaller vehicles organised by Nica for transfer to a safe house until payment was received.
The fee was between £10,000 and £13,000, for the “VIP route” in which the driver was aware of the presence of smuggled migrants inside the trailer attached to his lorry.
Some of the trips were thwarted by border officials and residents in Orsett, Essex, who had repeatedly reported migrants being dropped off to the police. Yet the smuggling operation was not stopped until after the tragic journey.
Meanwhile, the families of the victims in Vietnam and Britain spoke of their loss.
Phan Thi Thanh (41) had sold the family home and left her son with his godmother before setting off on the ill-fated journey.
Her “heartbroken” son said: “I heard about the incident from mass media so I called dad in the UK in order to confirm if mum was a victim. I was very shocked, very sad and I was crying a lot.”
Tran Hai Loc and his wife Nguyen Thi Van, both 35, who were found huddled together in death, left two children aged six and four.
The children’s grandfather Tran Dinh Thanh said: “Everyday, when they come home from school they always look at the photos of their parents on the altar.
“The decease of both parents is a big loss to them.”
Fifteen-year-old Nguyen Huy Hung’s Uk-based father Nguyen Huy Tung, learned about his death on social media.
He said: “My wife had fainted many times whenever our son’s name was mentioned.”