verdict Wednesday in the Belgian trial
The verdict will fall this Wednesday morning for the 23 people suspected of having taken part in the migrant smuggling which claimed the lives of 39 Vietnamese, discovered dead asphyxiated in a container in England.
It’s one of the most heartbreaking immigration dramas of recent years: 39 bodies were found on October 23, 2019 in the back of a lorry in the industrial area of Grays, east London . The victims, 31 men and eight women aged 15 to 44, were all from Vietnam. They died of asphyxiation and hyperthermia due to the heat and lack of oxygen in the confined space of the container.
Procedures in four countries
Legal proceedings have been initiated in at least four countries, including Belgium, where 23 people were tried in December for having participated to varying degrees in this human trafficking.
The container had arrived in England from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge. And the investigation established that at least fifteen of the thirty-nine occupants had been taken care of in Belgium on October 22, before a detour to Bierne (northern France) where the group would have hidden in this trailer.
The network had two hideouts in the Brussels municipality of Anderlecht where candidates for clandestine passage to the United Kingdom who had passed through Germany or the Netherlands were gathered.
15 years in prison required
At the trial in mid-December before the Bruges Criminal Court, fifteen years in prison were required against Vo Van Hong, a 45-year-old Vietnamese accused of being the leader of the “criminal organization” having managed this care in Brussels. .
According to the prosecution, this network would have organized “at least 130 transports” from Southeast Asia to England, each exile paying an average of 24,000 euros in several installments.
Against his 22 co-defendants, mostly Vietnamese, Belgians of Vietnamese origin or Moroccans, sentences ranging from twelve months to ten years in prison have been requested.
Hideout owners, stewards in charge of daily needs in Anderlecht, taxi drivers, etc. : all also denied their involvement. Their lawyers asked for release.
Next trial in France
In the United Kingdom, seven men have already been sentenced in January 2021 to terms ranging from three to 27 years in prison. These include the men responsible for organizing driver rotations, part of the activity subcontracted by the organization to a Northern Irish transport company.
Among these seven convicts, Eamonn Harrison, a Northern Irish truck driver in his twenties, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for having transported the trailer to the mainland, to Zeebrugge. He assured during his trial in London that he was unaware of the presence on board of illegal immigrants.
In Vietnam, four men were sentenced in September 2020 to terms ranging from two and a half to seven and a half years in prison.
Finally in France another trial is looming on the horizon. At least 26 people were indicted (charged) in the investigation opened in Paris in May 2020. Two large waves of arrests then took place simultaneously, one in Île-de-France, the other in Belgium .