The driver of the refrigerated truck where 39 Vietnamese migrants were found dead in October in England pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Wednesday in a London court.
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Originally from Northern Ireland, Maurice Robinson, 25, had already pleaded guilty to helping illegal immigration and having made a financial profit from this activity, during a previous appearance in court in November. Old Bailey criminal from Belmarsh High Security Prison, southeast of the British capital. The corpses of 31 men and 8 women, including two 15-year-old adolescents, were discovered on October 23 in a container in the Grays industrial area, east of London. The container came from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.
A total of five people have been charged in this case. Besides Maurice Robinson, four other people appeared on Wednesday, also by videoconference, most of the lawyers and journalists following the hearing via Skype. Gheorghe Nica, 43, a Romanian and British citizen, pleaded not guilty of manslaughter and assistance to illegal immigration. Alexandru-Ovidiu Hanga, a 27-year-old Romanian, pleaded not guilty to assisting illegal immigration. Christopher Kennedy, 23, from Northern Ireland, had previously pleaded not guilty on the same charge.
The latest accused, Valentin Calota, 37, from Birmingham (central England), was not asked to rule on the charge of illegal immigration assistance. The prosecutor, William Emlyn Jones, will decide within three weeks the holding of a trial for Maurice Robinson. The trials of the other accused will begin on October 5 at the Old Bailey criminal court and may last up to eight weeks.
Many of the victims of this tragedy came from a poor region in central Vietnam, which somehow makes a living from fishing, agriculture or industry. Families are in debt to the tune of thousands of dollars to send one of their own to the United Kingdom, via clandestine channels, in the hope that they will find gainful employment there. The drama exposed the dangers of illegal immigration, with unscrupulous traffickers taking advantage of the candidates' vulnerability, the latter often ending up in nail bars or illegal cannabis farms in the UK, reduced to a state of semi-slavery.
