BBC
A people trafficker has been jailed for 12 years and seven months over the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants who died in a lorry container.
Marius Draghici, 50, from Romania, admitted 39 counts of manslaughter and one count of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.
The bodies were discovered on an industrial estate in Grays, Essex, in October 2019.
The Old Bailey heard conditions in the trailer must have been “unspeakable”.
The judge, Mr Justice Garnham, said Draghici “was a small but essential cog in the wheels of this criminal conspiracy” that “put would-be migrants at risk of death”.
He was also sentenced to four years and two months in prison for the unlawful immigration offence, to be served concurrently.
Draghici was in charge of the migrants’ onward transportation in the UK – acting as a driver – and prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones KC described him as the “right hand man” to one of the ringleaders, Gheorghe Nica.
Fellow Romanian Nica, of Basildon, Essex, is one of four men already convicted of manslaughter – and one of 11 in total now jailed in connection with the deaths.
The victims included 28 men, eight women and three children varying between the ages of 15 and 44.
They had paid a fee of £10,000, rising to £13,000, for what was promised as a “VIP” route to Europe and the hope of better-paid work.
The migrants travelled on 22 October, 2019, from Paris to Bierne, a town in northern France, where they were then seen being taken by taxis to a shed on an isolated farm.
They later clambered into a lorry, which was seen on CCTV footage making its way across France towards the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, where it was loaded onto a ferry bound for Purfleet-on-Thames, Essex.
Temperatures rose to 38.5C (101F) in the container, by which point oxygen levels had slumped and the air was…
