Trucker who smuggled 21 into UK jailed

A ROMANIAN truck driver who smuggled 21 Vietnamese adults and children into Britain inside ‘the modern equivalent of a slave ship’ has been jailed.

Andrut Mihai Duma, 29, brought children as young as 12 hidden in two 20in-tall ‘coffin hides’ inside the trailer of a refrigerated lorry.

Police at Newhaven, East Sussex found ten people in one cramped hide and 11 in another, including ‘six to eight’ children.

Duma, from Salford, Greater Manchester, was jailed for six years at Guildford Crown Court yesterday, when his trial was scheduled to start, after he pleaded guilty to assisting unlawful immigration.

Judge Rufus Taylor said: ‘It was a refrigerated trailer with no fresh air. These people were literally in the modern equivalent of a slave ship.’

He told Duma the makeshift hides were ‘quite obviously extremely dangerous’ and said he would recommend his deportation.