Migrant’s £13k VIP smuggling trip to UK in back of a lorry

Upgrade meant ‘driver knew you were in’

A VIETNAMESE man has told how his family paid £13,000 for him to be smuggled into Britain days before 39 migrants were found dead in a sealed lorry trailer.

It paid for a “VIP” service, which meant that “the lorry driver knows you are there”, the man, known as Witness X, told the Old Bailey.

Prosecutors claim his trip with 15 migrants on October 11 was one of two successful cross-channel runs before the October 23 tragedy.

He said he went to France last year on a Schengen visa obtained in Poland where he had enrolled on a course.

He was given the address of a flat outside Paris where he joined a group of Vietnamese people. They had to switch off phones and were driven to a spot where a lorry driver took them in.

The witness said: “If anybody want to ease yourself do it in the bag and everybody have to stand up together and don’t make a sound.”

Th e trai l er, parked by the one in which the 39 were found in Purfleet, Essex, was dropped off at Zeebrugge by Eamonn Harrison and picked up by Christopher Kennedy at Purf leet in October 11, jurors heard. Harrison, 23, of Co Down, and alleged organiser Gheorghe Nica, 43, of Basildon, Essex, deny 39 counts of manslaughter.

Harrison, Kennedy, 24, of Co Armagh a n d Val e n t i n Calota , 37, of Birmingham, deny a wider smuggling conspiracy that Nica has admitted.

The trial continues.

Everybody have to stand up and don’t make a sound ‘WITNESS X’ TELLS OLD BAILEY OF EARLIER TRIP

SCENE Where the 39 victims were found