SIX LORRY MIGRANTS FLEE FOR BORDER
Kurdish refugees leave asylum centre before gardaí can interview them
AT LEAST six illegal migrants discovered on an Irish-owned lorry bound for Rosslare have left the direct provision centre they were placed in and are making their way to the UK, it has emerged.
Sixteen Kurds were found at sea on Thursday, inside a cargo shipment bound for a pharmaceutical company in Cork. In an exclusive interview with the Irish Mail on Sunday one of the 16, with the help of an interpreter, revealed details of the harrowing journey they had taken from Iraq and Iran, on to Turkey, then France before finally arriving in Ireland.
‘I was three days on the truck. I didn’t eat. I had nothing. I was hungry,’ said one young man.
‘I went from Iraq to Turkey by car. I don’t know where in Turkey I was put
on the truck because it was night. Somebody tore up my passport in Turkey. I was put in a second truck, but I don’t know where because it was night. Then, we went to the ferry and we came straight here. I didn’t see the drivers... Some people at night time put me in the back of the trucks, they were Afghan and some were Turkish.’
While they were aware of the deaths of 39 people in a container in Essex last month, they were still willing to risk their lives and paid around €15,000 each in the hope of getting a better life.
When they arrived in Ireland, gardaí said 14 were adults and had sought ‘international protection’ here in Ireland.
Two juveniles among the group were placed in the care of Tusla, but one of these has since been deemed an adult.
Garda sources confirmed last night that ‘some are no longer using the services made available
‘Somebody tore up my passport in Turkey’
by to them by the Reception and Integration Agency (RIA) and may have travelled to the UK.’
The source confirmed that ‘one strong line of inquiry’ for An Garda is that the men, or someone assisting them, ‘broke into the unit’ they were found in somewhere in France, without the driver’s knowledge.
The driver and the company which owns the unit have been cooperating fully with gardaí.
It is believed the men, who left the north Dublin direct provision centre, have made their way to Belfast in a bid to travel to England.
The MoS understands that gardaí discovered that the men had left on Friday when they arrived at the direct provision centre to conduct interviews and were told that they had gone.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the driver of the refrigerated unit may have been gassed while he slept so the men could board his lorry undetected.
A source told the MoS that the driver, a man in his 50s from Wexford, believes the stowaways gained entry while he slept at a truck stop in Troyes, a village 500km south of Cherbourg Port.
‘He woke up the next morning feeling unwell,’ said the source.
‘His mouth was dry and he had a headache. He thought he was coming down with the flu or something and passed it off. He had slept for about nine hours in Troyes and when he woke and gathered himself, he did the routine check around the lorry. All the seals were intact. The bolts and locks were in place.’
It is understood that entry was gained to the refrigerated unit by climbing on the roof and using a steel bar to ‘jemmy’ open the door, just enough to pass a person through. The driver told gardaí that he didn’t hear the noise while he slept during the scheduled overnight truck stop.
The 16 migrants are believed to have entered the unit in the early hours of Wednesday morning while he was ‘out cold.’
‘It happens quite a lot to drivers in Italy,’ said the source.
‘They are asleep so they have the vents open on the truck. It’s like a can of hairspray and they spray it into the vent. It will knock out the driver for maybe four to six hours, depending on how much is sprayed.’
The driver had picked up his load from a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland in the days before.
It was here that the pharmaceutical company, which owns the cargo,
‘The door was only opened a fraction’
placed a steel cord seal on the unit before the driver set off.
The cargo was destined for Cork, where procedure would require that personnel from the same company would remove the seal and take delivery of the load. The seal was intact before officials broke it open with bolt cutters at Rosslare port.
‘The steel cord seal was intact before the doors where opened,’ said the source. ‘The locks were also all there, still intact. They had all been
put on by the pharmaceutical company and could only be opened by them once the load got to Cork.’
It is understood that the driver was doing a routine delivery. The company he works for is highly regarded.
‘This was a delivery that the driver did maybe twice, three times a month,’ said the source. ‘Everything is digitally tracked so the company could tell where he was at all times. They could see what speed he was going at, where he stopped, everything.
‘He told gardaí he thinks someone sprayed gas through the vents in his cab. There is no way he wouldn’t have heard them getting in otherwise. There is a rubber seal that runs down the door of the trailer. They got up on the roof of the trailer and jemmied the door open with a crowbar or some kind of steel bar. Then, whoever put them in pulled back the crowbar and the door slammed shut. The door was only opened a fraction, just enough to get them in, barely to slip in.’
The driver, who has worked for the company that owns the refrigerated unit for 20 years, was understood to be ‘absolutely shocked’ when the doors were opened and 16 migrants emerged.
‘He was shocked,’ said the source. ‘He knew the load was going to be destroyed, he knew the lorry was going to be destroyed and he knew the gardaí would be involved. He was just absolutely horrified.’
The source revealed that the unit was airtight, and the temperature was set to around 15 degrees. After gaining entry, the men remained undetected as the driver made the seven-hour journey from Troyes to Cherbourg, where the unit was checked by officials and allowed to sail.
The source said: ‘He knows all the regulations and he did everything by the book. Customs and police examined the trailer at Cherbourg and when they saw bolts and locks in place they let it on through. If they had looked up at the top at all they might have seen some tampering, but you would need to have been looking very closely.’
The men, who believed they were travelling to the UK, panicked when air supply in the unit began to run low. Photos seen by the Mail, taken at
They panicked, ‘we are on this ship too long ’
the back of the unit, show cuts to the rubber seal where it is believed they made holes for air.
‘They thought they were going to the UK and that they would only be on the ship for two hours,’ said the source.
‘This is a 16-18 hour trip. They panicked thinking, “We are on this ship too long,” so they started roaring and shouting.
‘They knew they were on the ship too long, they realised “We aren’t going to England, we are going somewhere else.” ’
It is understood the men used several ‘stopping bars’, used to make sure the load doesn’t move, to bang on the door of the unit. Damage is estimated to be in the region of €10,000.
The men all had mobile phones and money and a number of tornup documents were discovered in the unit after they were removed. The truck and the trailer have been released back to the owners.
Last night, the source said the men would have died if they had not been detected by Stena officials.
‘The unit would have been opened in Cork and it would have been too late,’ she said.
‘They were running out of air as it was. They had another five hours on the ship before they got to Rosslare and that probably wouldn’t have been enough.’