Four alleged people smugglers charged after Channel migrant disaster killed six

17 August 2023 , 00:04

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They have not yet been named. File image (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

Four alleged people smugglers have been charged with manslaughter following the drowning of at least six UK-bound migrants in the English Channel.

Paris prosecutors on Wednesday evening said that the defendants were being remanded in custody until a criminal trial could be organised. All were said to be involved in the disaster last Saturday morning which saw a punctured dinghy overturn in the sea, flinging some 60 people overboard, close to Sangatte, in northern France.

Many did not have lifejackets on, despite paying the equivalent of around £1000 each for an illegal passage to Britain. The accused have not yet been identified by name, but are described as two Iraqis, both aged 43, and two men from Sudan, aged 29 and 17. They were indicted for ‘manslaughter’, ‘participation in a criminal association’, and ‘causing unintentional injuries.’

The Iraqis are specifically suspected of ‘organising the transfer of migrants on a makeshift boat for remuneration’, a spokesman for the Paris prosecutor's office told France Info, the country’s public service broadcaster. The Sudanese men are meanwhile accused ‘of having actively participated in the transport of passengers in dangerous conditions in return for a preferential rate on their own passage’.

This effectively means that the Sudanese men wanted to immigrate to Britain, and kept costs down by helping to smuggle others into the country. The bodies of all those confirmed dead are still being examined at the Lille Forensic Institute, and two men officially remain missing at sea.

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All eight victims were young men from Afghanistan, according to investigators. Thirty people rescued by British and French emergency services have so far been heard as witnesses. The latest disaster comes almost two years to the day since the worst English Channel small boats accident ever.

An inflatable dinghy with 29 people on board collapsed on November 24 2021, and the 27 who died were later identified as 16 Kurds from Iraqi Kurdistan, four Afghans, and five other nationalities. French emergency workers in a telephone centre were later blamed for failing to answer their distress calls properly, but the people smugglers responsible for organising the boat have never been brought to justice.

There were 755 people recorded as crossing the Channel in small boats last Thursday – the highest daily number so far this year. Since current records began in January 1 2018, 100,715 migrants have arrived in the UK after making the journey.

Peter Allen