People Trafficker Jailed For Suffocating 39 Migrants to Death in ‘Unspeakable’ Conditions

Police officers drive away a lorry (C) in which 39 dead bodies were discovered sparking a
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Oliver JJ Lane

Another human trafficker has been jailed in the United Kingdom over the shocking 2019 killings of 39 Vietnamese migrants in a truck trailer by a callous smuggling gang.

Everyone aboard a sealed truck trailer was found dead by UK police in November 2019, with 39 people having been loaded aboard in an attempt to smuggle them into the United Kingdom. The 39 Vietnamese national victims suffocated or died of hypothermia in the back of a sealed refrigerated unit, which is an air-tight trailer meant for hauling meat or fish, where they were locked for at least 12 hours having paid £13,000 each for the journey.

Now another member of that trafficking gang has been jailed, with 50-year-old Marius Draghici getting 12 years for 39 counts of manslaughter and one count of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration, reports the BBC. The judge is reported to have called Draghici a “small but essential cog in the wheels of this criminal conspiracy” and the court heard he was a driver for the people smugglers and a “right-hand man” to the ringleader.

11 people have now been jailed in the United Kingdom over the deaths, as well as 19 people convicted in Belgium.

It was reported the temperatures inside the sealed container during the sea voyage to the United Kingdom became unbearably hot, as high as 38.5C (101F), and that those inside attempted to break through the roof of the vehicle to escape.

The case was one with, tragically, other parallels as people smugglers made huge amounts of money to illegally carry people across Europe. 71 migrants were found dead, locked in the back of a truck in Austria after the smuggler driving the vehicle abandoned it at the side of the road.

Phone recordings of the smugglers revealed they could hear the migrants in the back screaming and trying to break their way out. Four smugglers were sentenced to 25 years in prison each.

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