Gardai step up action on trafficking suspects

GARDAI have stepped up intelligence gathering on Irish truck drivers suspected of involvement in people smuggling following the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants in the back of a refrigerated trailer in Essex last month.

Security sources say smugglers are increasingly turning to people trafficking because the cargo poses less risk than other forms of smuggling. Unlike cigarettes or alcohol, there is no heavy loading and unloading of the illicit cargo and engagement ends once it is delivered to its destination, usually close to the ferry port.

Two Irish drivers have been separately convicted of people smuggling in the Netherlands and in Belgium in the past three years.

Lee Ryan, a driver from Newry, pleaded guilty in 2016 to trying to smuggle 15 Vietnamese people into Britain in a refrigerated lorry.

Ryan was paid €15,000 to take the migrants from Antwerp

to the UK , working out at a fee of €1,000 per person.

In a case that foreshadowed the Essex tragedy, the court was told the Vietnamese might not have survived the eight-and-a-half hour journey to the UK because of the cold temperatures inside the trailer.

A second truck driver, Mark Allison, from Lisburn, is serving a six-year sentence after police discovered six Albanian men concealed in the back of his refrigerated trailer in Apeldoorn, in the

Netherlands. The men were not dressed to withstand the freezing temperatures; Allison’s trial was told they could have suffocated or died of hypothermia, had they been smuggled into the UK.

Meanwhile British police arrested a Northern Irish man last Friday over the discovery of the bodies of 31 Vietnamese men and eight women in the back of a refrigerated truck at Essex.

A second Northern Ireland man has been charged in connection with the deaths, and a third is facing extradition.

Two Monaghan brothers, Ronan and Christopher Hughes, have yet to respond to an appeal from Essex police to “hand themselves in”. The police want to question the brothers in connection with the 39 deaths. A spokesman said: “We need you both to come forward and assist this investigation. Although we have already spoken to Ronan Hughes recently by telephone, we need to have a conversation with him and his brother in person.”