Britain jails last gang member in Vietnamese lorry tragedy
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Thirty-nine Vietnamese migrants suffocated in a container as they were being transported to what they hoped would be new lives in Britain.
PHOTO: AFP
LONDON - The final member of a people-smuggling gang linked to the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants found in the back of a lorry in south-east England was jailed for seven years in Britain on Nov 30.
The migrants – the youngest of whom were two 15-year-old boys – suffocated in the container as they were being transported to what they had hoped would be new lives in Britain.
Haulage boss Caolan Gormley, 26, “succumbed to temptation and greed” when he became involved in the “extremely lucrative business” of smuggling migrants, judge Richard Marks said at the Old Bailey court in London.
“But for those deaths, I have no doubt whatsoever that this illegal importation of illegal immigrants would have continued, as would your involvement,” he told him.
The victims, many of whom came from Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces in north-central Vietnam, were found inside the sealed unit at a port near London on Oct 23, 2019.
Eleven people have now been convicted over the plot in Britain, five of them for manslaughter.
Prosecutions have also taken place in France and Belgium.
A jury deliberated for just over an hour on Nov 27 to find Gormley, from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, guilty of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.
During the trial the prosecution told jurors that people smugglers exploited the victims’ desperation to get to Britain, charging more than £10,000 (S$17,000) a head. AFP
