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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.
Police and forensic officers at the Waterglade Industrial Park in Essex in October 2019
Credit: PA
The people smuggling kingpin behind the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants, remains at large, a judge has said, as police warned traffickers who trade in human misery “we will find you and we will stop you”.
Four men were jailed at the Old Bailey on Friday for between 13-years and four months and 27-years after being convicted of the manslaughter of the migrants who suffocated in the back of a lorry in October 2019.
But the judge in the case, Mr Justice Sweeney, said there was a mysterious Vietnamese mastermind by the name of Phong, who was at the very top of the conspiracy.
By Press Association 2021
Maurice Robinson, 26, leaving Purfleet port, Essex (Essex Police/PA)
A lorry driver who discovered the bodies of 39 migrants in the back of his trailer had been “blind to the risks” of people smuggling, a court has heard.
The Vietnamese victims, aged between 15 and 44, had suffocated in the sealed container as it was shipped from Zeebrugge to Purfleet in Essex in October 2019.
Maurice Robinson, 26, was left in shock after he opened the doors and found they were all dead, the Old Bailey was told.
His boss and ringleader in the operation Ronan Hughes, 41, had told him to give them air quickly after collecting the trailer from the docks.