Asylum seeker boat pilot detained for nine years over Channel crossing deaths

An asylum seeker has been detained for nine years and six months for the manslaughter of fellow migrants who drowned trying to cross the English Channel.

Ibrahima Bah was found guilty of killing four migrants when he piloted an “unseaworthy” boat between France and the UK on December 14 2022.

During a retrial at Canterbury Crown Court, Bah said smugglers threatened to kill him if he did not drive the boat but the prosecution said he was not telling the truth and he owed his fellow passengers a “duty of care” as their pilot.

Jurors had reached a majority verdict of ten to two in what is believed to be the first conviction of its kind.

They also found the Senegalese national unanimously guilty of facilitating illegal entry to the UK.

Sentencing Bah yesterday, Mr Justice Johnson KC said: “The boat was wholly inadequate, and not remotely seaworthy for a Channel crossing.

“It was a death trap, just as every boat of its type which sets off across the Channel in similar circumstances is a death trap – the fact that in many cases fatalities do not occur is not remotely reassuring.

“What happened is an utter tragedy for those who died and for their families.

“It was made of substandard and insufficiently robust material – it had no rigid hull, no seating, no sufficiently powerful engine, no lights, no navigation equipment, no charts, no compass, no (radio), no emergency equipment, no flares, no fire extinguisher, no first aid kits, no food and water, no paddles, no toolkits, no life raft, no waterproofs, no life jackets, and an insufficient number of buoyancy aids, which were not manufactured to any recognised standard.

“It was grossly overcrowded (and) you were travelling across the busiest shipping lane in the world, on a cold winter’s night.”

During the trial, jurors were told that the home-built, lowquality inflatable should have had no more than 20 people on board but carried at least 43 people in the English Channel that night.

A total of 39 survivors were brought to shore in the port of Dover.