The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

39 bodies in containers: How the truck came to Essex

2019-10-23T17:10:46.057Z


How did a 39-body truck get into an industrial area in Essex? The police believe that they have reconstructed the last part of the route. But many questions - such as the identity of the victims - are open, murders are running.



Boris Johnson speaks of an "unimaginable tragedy", the British Interior Minister Priti Patel was shocked and deeply saddened, Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her condolences: In the English county of Essex 39 bodies were found in a truck container.

According to the police, the dead are 38 adults and a teenager. The investigators arrested the driver; the 25-year-old is under suspicion of murder. According to the BBC, it is a Northern Irishman from the Portadown area. It is unclear if only he steered the vehicle.

In the early evening, the police began removing the truck from its location on Eastern Avenue in the Waterglade Industrial Park industrial area in Grays. In a safe place, the dead were to be recovered. Thereafter, the forensics should end their work at the site to provide the companies in the industrial area back to the area, it said.

Interior Ministry officials in charge of migration worked with the police to investigate the case, British Interior Minister Priti Patel told parliament. The National Crime Agency (NCA), the UK's investigative body for organized crime, is also investigating the case.

The police are following several investigative approaches:

  • Who are the dead?
    To nationality, age, gender is so far nothing known. The police believe it could take a long time for the 39 victims to be identified.
  • What is known about the vehicle?
    According to the British police, the vehicle probably comes from Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said that the truck of the brand Scania carries a Bulgarian license plate. He was registered in 2017 in the port city of Varna on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. The owner is therefore a company owned by a woman from Ireland. According to Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov left the vehicle a few days after registration and never returned.
  • Which route did the truck come to Essex?
    Where the truck drove off is unknown - as well as when and where the 39 people were put in the container. Currently, the police assume that the tractor came from Northern Ireland and collected the container trailer on the way. The team arrived via Zeebrugge in Belgium in the port of Purfleet in the east of England. At around 0.30 am local time on Wednesday, it arrived in the area around Thurrock, according to a statement of the authority. At 1.05 am the truck left the harbor. Another 35 minutes later - around 1.40 am - rescue teams alerted the police. Anyone who had previously called the emergency services to the truck is unclear. The Belgian public prosecutor's office said they would investigate how long the truck had been in Belgium - it could have been days or hours, one did not know.

In the video: 39 corpses discovered in a truck in Essex

Video

AP

By providing information on the route via Belgium, the investigators corrected earlier data that the lorry's route had initially taken to Ireland and that the lorry had arrived by ferry from Ireland to the port of Holyhead in Wales on Saturday - and from there on to England.

If the destination was England from the start, this route would have been at least unusual - the journey across Ireland is an extra day's drive. Initially, it had been speculated that such stricter controls would be bypassed in the large English port of Dover and in Calais, France.

The Freight Transport Association (FTA) did not want to comment on possible routes the driver could have taken. A spokesman for the Freight Forwarders Association pointed out that not only Calais is a hub for migrants, but "all European ports".

photo gallery


17 pictures

39 bodies in trucks: horrible find in Essex

The investigators assume a case of smuggling of people. All traffickers should be hunted down and held accountable, Premier Johnson said in parliament. Representative Jackie Doyle-Price, in whose constituency the truck was found, said, "Putting 39 people in a closed metal container shows a vile contempt for human life."

The cadaver reminiscent of two similar cases: In 2000, British customs officials in Dover found the bodies of 58 Chinese in a tomato van. The case is considered the heaviest refugee tragedy in the UK.

Three years ago, on the way to Germany, 71 refugees died in a refrigerated truck in Austria. The parked truck with the bodies of the refugees was found on 27 August 2015 on a highway in Austria. The vehicle had left the day before in southern Hungary. The refugees in the hold were suffocated agonizingly after three hours at the latest. A Hungarian court sentenced the main suspects to long prison sentences.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2019-10-23

You may like

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.