New Suspect Charged in Trafficking After Truck Deaths in Britain

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/24/world/europe/essex-lorry-bodies-charge.html

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LONDON — The police in Essex, England, have charged another man with human trafficking in the deaths of 39 Vietnamese people whose bodies were found in the refrigerated trailer of a truck in October.

The man, Christopher Kennedy, 23, of County Armagh, Northern Ireland, was arrested on Friday on suspicion of conspiracy to traffic people and conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration. He was detained in connection with the investigation into the grisly discovery in Grays, England, on Oct. 23, the Essex Police said Sunday in a statement.

Mr. Kennedy is expected to appear in Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court in Essex on Monday on charges including “conspiracy to facilitate the commission of a breach of U.K. immigration law,” the statement said.

The driver of the truck, Maurice Robinson, 25, also of Northern Ireland, was charged in October with manslaughter, conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and money laundering in connection with the deaths, which the police said were the tragic outcome of an international trafficking operation.

Another truck driver from Northern Ireland, Eamonn Harrison, 22, has also been charged in Ireland in the case. He faces counts of manslaughter, human trafficking and immigration offenses but last week challenged attempts to extradite him to Britain.

Separately on Thursday, officials in Ireland began an investigation after 16 migrants were found in a sealed truck container on an overnight ferry traveling from France to Ireland. Some sought asylum. On Sunday, the police said, nine of the men in the group were missing, according to local news reports.

Days before, eight people, including four children, who said they were from Afghanistan were discovered in a refrigerated truck headed to Britain from the port city of Calais, France, local news outlets reported. They were taken to the hospital with signs of hypothermia. Also this month, 31 Pakistanis were found in a truck in southern France near the border with Italy, French prosecutors said.

In the Essex case, after initially identifying the victims as Chinese, the police said this month that they were all from Vietnam and released all 39 names. The victims had set out from Vietnam seeking better lives in Europe and were transported in a trailer from Zeebrugge, Belgium, to the industrial park in Grays.

Grieving families in Vietnam told reporters that they had been struggling to repatriate the bodies for burial, and that neither the British nor the Vietnamese government would pay the costs.

Bui Huy Cuong, deputy chairman of a district people’s committee in Ha Tinh Province, where many of the victims were from, told news outlets that the Vietnamese government was willing to grant loans to the families to return the remains but that the they would have to repay the debt.

Pham Van Thin, the father of one victim, Pham Thi Tra My, told the British newspaper The Guardian of the choices that Vietnamese officials had given him. “They gave me a document saying the two governments will not pay for repatriation,” he was quoted as saying. “They offered two options: receiving ashes or the body.”

He said he would have to pay about $1,750 to return his daughter’s ashes, or about $2,800 for her body.

A GoFundMe page to help pay to repatriate the victims’ bodies had raised more than $25,000 by Sunday.