Vietnam jails four smugglers over Essex migrant lorry deaths

Vietnam has jailed four people for helping to smuggle 39 of the country’s citizens to the UK – where they suffocated to death in the back of a lorry.

Nguyen Quoc Thanh, 26, Nguyen Thi Thuy Hoa, 36, Tran Dinh Truong, 35, and Nguyen Xuan Trieu, 24, were sentenced to a total of 51 years in prison at a court in the city of Ha Tinh, in central Vietnam, on Monday.

Three others – 53-year-old Vo Van Ky, 68-year-old Vo Van Ho, and 53-year-old Le Van Hue – were given suspended sentences totalling three and a half years.

All seven defendants were charged with ‘illegally sending people abroad’. 

It comes after 39 migrants – 29 men, eight women and two teenage boys, all from Vietnam – were found dead in the back of a refrigerated lorry in Grays, Essex, in October last year.

The migrants had been taken to the UK via Belgium, where they were lodaed inside a container that as driven to the port of Zeebrugge.

Once at the port, the container was loaded on a ferry bound for Purfleet, in Essex. 

Police say the plan was then to take the container eight miles to Collingwood Farm, where the migrants would be unloaded and driven away in a ‘fleet’ of cars.

But a short time later emergency services were called to an industrial park in nearby Grays after it was discovered that the migrants inside the container had died.

The driver of the lorry – 25-year-old Maurice Robinson, from Northern Ireland – was arrested and charged with murder, but has since pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Haulier Ronan Hughes, 40, pleaded guilty to the same charges last month. Both are awaiting sentencing

Eamonn Harrison, 23, who is accused of driving the container through Belgium, has also appeared in court but pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to assist unlawful immigration. He is due to go on trial in October.  

Speaking after the verdict in Vietnam, Nguyen Dinh Gia – who lost his 20-year-old son Luong in the tragedy – said he believed the defendants should not have been given jail terms.

‘The people involved were just trying to help and then the accident happened,’ he said, adding that he had not known the trial was taking place.

‘He was an adult who made his own decision and joined the trip voluntarily, with the aim to improve his life, earning money to alleviate our poverty.’

Gia said his son had wanted to travel to Britain from France, where he had been living illegally since 2018.

The journey to Britain, where he aimed to look for work in a nail salon, would have cost him around 11,000 pounds ($14,000).

‘It has been almost a year but whenever I think about this, it’s still painful,’ Gia said.

Luong and the majority of the other migrants came from a handful of poor central provinces, hotspots for illegal migration to Europe.

The lorry carrying the victims – including two 15-year-old boys – arrived on a ferry from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge in the early hours of October 23.

They died from lack of oxygen and overheating, according to post-mortem examinations.

A number of people have been arrested and charged in Britain, France and Belgium in connection with the case.