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– With doubling the usual number of migrants packed in a sealed refrigerated container to be smuggled to Great Britain from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, truck owner Ronan Hughes warned driver Maurice Robinson via text message to stop and give them air when he left port in England. When he opened the container, they were already dead. Eamonn Harrison, a 23-year-old truck driver from Northern Ireland who took the container to Zeebrugge, was found guilty of manslaughter on Monday in the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants, including two 15-year-olds, last October. Guardian reports. Robinson and Gheorghe Nica, the Romanian coordinator of the operation, pleaded guilty before the trial began. Hughes pleaded guilty to manslaughter in August.
Two other members of the gang, Christopher Kennedy and Valentin Calota, were found guilty of human trafficking, the AP reports. The gang, which recruited young truck drivers in Northern Ireland, also smuggled alcohol and cigarettes. During the ten-week lawsuit in England, prosecutors said the gang charged migrants about $ 17,000 for the trip, while drivers paid about $ 2,000 per passenger. “They were treated worse than cattle,” said lead researcher Daniel Stoten. They treated them as just another commodity. It could have been drugs. ‘ Harrison claimed he thought he had smuggled stolen truck parts. The defendants will be sentenced in January and those guilty of manslaughter could face life sentences. (When they started to choke, the people trapped in the container called a Vietnamese emergency number and sent goodbye messages to their families.)