Call for manslaughter charge against traffickers
Witnesses say they tried to dissuade drowned family from crossing Channel with people smugglers
France is being pressed for manslaughter charges against traffickers who let a migrant family sail to their deaths in the Channel. Rasoul Iran-nejad and Shiva Mohammad Panahi died with their children Anita, nine, Armin, six, and 15-month-old Artin, pictured
FRENCH investigators are being urged to bring manslaughter charges against the traffickers behind the deaths of a family of five migrants including a 15-month old baby boy in the windswept English Channel.
UK government sources told The Daily Telegraph that people smugglers would face up to 14 years in jail in the UK and be investigated for manslaughter for putting a boat packed with 22 men, women and children to sea in such dangerous conditions.
Asked if the French should adopt the same approach and investigate them for manslaughter, a source said: “Completely. We have to go after the criminal gangs.”
The Kurdish family from Sardasht city in Iran are among seven people now believed to have lost their lives in the worst disaster involving migrants attempting the perilous crossing and the first deaths of children.
Rasoul Iran-nejad, 35, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, 35, Anita, nine, and Armin, six, were crossing from France on Tuesday in the cabin of a boat for which they had paid £21,600 passage, according to family and friends. Their baby, Artin, has yet to be found.
When it capsized two miles off the coast in seas whipped up by gusts of up to 25 knots, they were trapped in the cabin as 15 others on the boat were pulled from the water. Rescuers believe two more are missing, feared dead.
Sébastien Pieve, the Dunkirk prosecutor, has already interviewed all but one of the 15 survivors detained as part of a criminal investigation and indicated yesterday he could bring charges within the next 24 hours.
He said: “It’s about establishing if they are victims or smugglers and identifying possible suspects, in particular the pilot of the boat.”
Rasoul’s brother, Khalil, said it was the family’s third attempt to reach the UK after two previous bids by train. “We begged him to not try to cross by boat. He insisted on going,” said Khalil, who last spoke to him on Monday.
This was despite the family’s experience crossing by sea from Turkey to Italy before travelling through France to Dunkirk. “He told me that there were giant sea waves. He said ‘if I knew it was this dangerous, I would have never tried it’,” said Khalil. Farhad Shekari, 28, also from Sardasht, said he too had tried
‘The smugglers are only interested in one thing and that’s the money. The middle man was forcing people to get on the boat’
to talk the family out of the crossing. He was due to board the same boat at LoonPlage near Dunkirk at 8am on Tuesday morning but when he saw how flimsy it was and the number of people trying to board, he changed his mind.
“There were 22 people in the boat and I said there are too many and I didn’t want to go,” he told The Telegraph. “I told people not to get in the boat. I said it was too dangerous. The family [who died] got on anyway. But I persuaded another family not to get onboard.
“The smugglers are only interested in one thing and that’s money. The middle man was forcing people to get on the boat. He was saying go, go, go but he didn’t force the family [who died],” he said, adding that while the children had life jackets, at least half of those on board did not.
Alain Ledaguenel, president of the French coastguard in Dunkirk, said given the 6ft waves, wind, and cold water, the boat was a death trap. “It wasn’t a dinghy but a polyester amateur fishing boat. It was overloaded and capsized because it almost certainly hit a wave sideways,” he said.
Rasoul, a construction worker, who had dropped out of school in grade four, left Iran with his family, partly due to poor living conditions and persecution and had been in France for a month, according to relatives.
They had told fellow migrants they hoped to join at least one family member already living in the UK. Khalil said his brother had initially decided to aim for Germany or Switzerland.
Today Dan O’mahoney, the UK’S Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, will meet Ann Cornet, who is in charge of the region, as the Government seeks to persuade the French to turn round boats in the Channel and send them back to France.
Writing in The Telegraph, Tony Smith, the former Border Force chief, said there needed to be a new international agreement with France for joint patrols to deter migrants by returning them to France, wherever they were picked up.
“Without this we are going to see more deaths and more drownings,” he said.