LONDON — A Romanian man who was part of an international human smuggling ring was sentenced Tuesday to more than 12 years in prison for the deaths of 39 migrants from Vietnam who suffocated in a truck trailer on their way to England in 2019.
Marius Mihai Draghici was the ringleader’s right-hand man and an “essential cog” in an operation that made huge profits exploiting people desperate to get to the U.K., Justice Neil Garnham said in Central Criminal Court known as the Old Bailey.
Victims, who paid about 13,000 pounds ($16,770) for so-called VIP service, died after trying in vain to punch a hole in the container with a metal pole as the temperature inside exceeded 100 degrees F (38.5 C). Their desperation as they struggled to breathe was captured in messages they tried to send loved ones and and recordings that showed “a growing recognition they were going to die there,” Garnham said.
There was no escape and no one could hear their cries, prosecutors said.
Their final hours “must have entailed unimaginable suffering and anguish,” Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones said Tuesday.
A young mother wrote a message to loved ones that was never sent: “Maybe going to die in the container. Cannot breathe any more.”
The 28 men, eight women and three children ranged in age from 15 to 44 and about half hailed from the Nghe An province in north central Vietnam. The victims included a bricklayer, a restaurant worker, a manicure technician, an aspiring beautician and a college graduate.
A married couple, Tran Hai Loc and Nguyen Thi Van, were found lying side by side Oct. 23, 2019 in the container that had been shipped by ferry from Zeebrugge, Belgium to Purfleet, England.
Draghici, 50, pleaded guilty last month to 39 counts of manslaughter and conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.
He’s the fifth man to be sentenced in the case in the U.K. Four other gang members were imprisoned in 2021 for terms ranging from 13 to 27 years for manslaughter. The stiffest sentence went to…
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