The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Container deaths probed
Crime: Police hold man after 39 bodies found in refrigerated lorry trailer
Police have begun the process of trying to identify 39 bodies found in a lorry on an industrial estate in Essex.
Detectives now say the refrigerated trailer containing the victims arrived at Purfleet in Essex from Zeebrugge in Belgium at around 12.30am on Wednesday while the front section known as the tractor came from Northern Ireland.
The lorry and trailer left the port shortly after 1.05am and officers were called around 30 minutes later after ambulance staff made the grim discovery at Waterglade Industrial Park in Eastern Avenue in nearby Grays.
The vehicle driver, named in reports as 25-year-old Mo Robinson from Portadown in Co Armagh, Northern Ireland, is being held by Essex Police on suspicion of murder.
Several pictures on his Facebook profile match those of the vehicle at the centre of the investigation in Grays.
There was no answer at the Co Armagh home of Mr Robinson’s family.
Speaking on Wednesday afternoon, Deputy Chief Constable Pippa Mills said: “In order to ensure we maintain the dignity of the people who sadly lost their lives, we will be moving the lorry and the trailer shortly.”
She said they were being moved to nearby Tilbury Docks so the bodies can be recovered while preserving the dignity of the victims.
“We are yet to identify them and must manage this sensitively with their families,” she added.
The prime minister said the perpetrators of the crime “should be hunted down”, while local MP Jackie Doyle-Price said the people smugglers responsible must be caught.
She told the House of Commons: “To put 39 people into a locked metal container shows a contempt for human life that is evil. The best thing we can do in memory of those victims is to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice.”
Police have said tracking route used “will be a key line of inquiry”.
The Bulgarian ministry of foreign affairs said the truck was registered in Varna in Bulgaria “under the name of a company owned by an Irish citizen”.
Police originally thought the lorry had travelled to the UK through Holyhead in north Wales on October 19 but later revealed that the trailer had come directly from the Continent.
A freight ferry service runs from Zeebrugge to Purfleet.
The discovery comes as the National Crime Agency said the number of migrants being smuggled into the UK in containers and lorries has risen in the last year.
Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, said: “This tragedy highlights the danger of migrant gangs people-smuggling on lorries.”
He told the PA news agency temperatures in refrigerated units can be as low as minus 25C and described conditions for anyone inside as “absolutely horrendous”.
The discovery is not the worst of its kind in the UK.
The bodies of 58 Chinese people were found in a container at Dover, Kent, in 2000.