The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
People-smuggler gang jailed
F yearsour people smugglers have been jailed for between 13 and 27 for the manslaughter of 39 migrants, who suffered an “excruciating” death in an airtight trailer.
The victims, Vietnamese men, women and children, had hoped for a better life in Britain when they agreed to pay up to £13,000 a head for a “VIP” smuggling service.
On October 22 2019, they were crammed into a lorry container to be shipped from Zeebrugge to Purfleet in Essex in pitch black and sweltering conditions.
The Old Bailey heard how they desperately tried to raise the alarm as they ran out of air before reaching British shores.
The migrants, two aged just 15, were found dead by lorry driver Maurice Robinson who collected the trailer from the docks early the next morning.
Robinson, 26, of Craigavon, and his boss Ronan Hughes, 41, of Armagh, had admitted plotting to people-smuggle and 39 counts of manslaughter.
Hughes’s partner in crime, Gheorghe Nica, 43, of Basildon, Essex, and Eamonn Harrison, 24, of County Down, who had collected the victims on the continent, were found guilty of the offences.
Yesterday, Robinson, who also admitted money laundering, was jailed for 13 years and four months, Hughes was sentenced to 20 years in prison, Nica to 27 years and Harrison to 18 years.
Mr Justice Sweeney said the migrants had desperately tried to break out of the trailer and raise the alarm before they
suffered an “excruciatingly slow death”, the judge said.
Other members of the gang were also jailed for their role in the organised criminal operation.
Lorry driver Christopher Kennedy, 24, of County Armagh, was jailed for seven years; Valentin Calota, 38, from Birmingham, was handed
four-and-a-half years; and Alexandru-ovidiu Hanga, 28, from Essex, was sentenced to three years in custody.
The court had heard the operation was longrunning and profitable, with the smugglers standing to make more than a million pounds in October 2019 alone.