Three Irish men jailed for 39 migrant deaths in Essex
Updated / Friday, 22 Jan 2021
19:52
Maurice Robinson, Ronan Hughes, Gheorghe Nica and Eamonn Harrison (l-r)
Three Irish men and a ringleader of a people smuggling gang have been jailed for the manslaughter of 39 migrants who suffered an excruciating death in an airtight trailer.
The victims, Vietnamese men, woman and children, had hoped for a better life when they agreed to pay up to €14,590-a-head for a VIP smuggling service.
Maurice Robinson, 26, from Craigavon, and his boss Ronan Hughes, 41, from Armagh, had admitted plotting to people smuggle and 39 counts of manslaughter.
Hughes s partner-in-crime Gheorghe Nica, 43, from Basildon, Essex, and Eamonn Harrison, 24, of Co Down, who had collected the victims on the continent, were found guilty of the offences.
By Press Association 2021
Bodies found in lorry container
Four people smugglers have been jailed for between 13 and 27 years for the manslaughter of 39 migrants, who suffered an “excruciating” death in an airtight trailer.
The victims, Vietnamese men, woman and children, had hoped for a better life in Britain when they agreed to pay up to £13,000 a head for a “VIP” smuggling service.
On October 22 2019, they were crammed into a lorry container to be shipped from Zeebrugge to Purfleet in Essex in pitch black and sweltering conditions.
Top row, left to right, Alexandru-Ovidiu Hanga, Christopher Kennedy, Eamonn Harrison and Gheorghe Nica, and bottom row, left to right, Maurice Robinson, Ronan Hughes and Valentin Calota (Essex Police/PA)
Four people smugglers who killed 39 Vietnamese migrants by bringing them into the UK in a sealed lorry have been jailed for a total of 78 years.
Drivers Eamonn Harrison, 23, and Maurice Robinson, 26 - together with Romanian fixer Gheorghe Nica, 43 - were paid by Ronan Hughes, 40, to ferry non-EU citizens into the UK.
Hughes headed the million-pound people-smuggling ring which used death trap lorries on multiple occasions - charging his human cargo up to £14,000 a head for a VIP service.
But the journey in October 2019 went horribly wrong when driver Robinson opened the back of his refrigerated trailer in an industrial park in Grays, Essex, to be met with a gush of steam - and 39 bodies.