Capsized refugee boat: smuggler caught on the English Channel came from Germany

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Graves of migrants who died in the refugee accident near Calais

Photo: MOHAMMED BADRA / EPA

It is the worst refugee accident so far in the strait between Calais and Dover: on Wednesday at least 27 people were killed in the English Channel.

According to the French police, the boat capsized off the coast near Calais.

According to the AP news agency, a pregnant woman and children were among the dead.

The overcrowded rubber dinghy, in which the migrants wanted to cover the approximately thirty kilometers to Great Britain, was full of water.

According to France's Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, five suspected smugglers were arrested by Thursday morning.

Apparently one of them came from Germany.

Darmanin said that the smuggler's car that was arrested that night had German license plates: "He bought these rubber dinghies in Germany."

In general, many of the boats used by smugglers on the Channel coast came from the Federal Republic.

"The smugglers buy these rubber boats in Germany with cash." Only a week ago the Dutch police stopped a suspected smuggler coming from Germany on the motorway towards France.

Survivors are to be interrogated

The special prosecutor's office in Lille is investigating into organized aiding and abetting illegal entry and negligent homicide.

According to prosecutor Carole Etienne, two survivors of the accident, apparently from Somalia and Iraq, are in the hospital and will be questioned shortly.

Captain Charles Devos of the French Maritime Rescue (SNSM) spoke of a "shocking" drama.

“We ran into a rubber dinghy that had deflated.

The little air it had left it kept it afloat, ”he said.

Prosecutor Etienne said the wreck had been confiscated and was being investigated to clarify the causes of the shipwreck.

French President Emmanuel Macron promised that he would not allow the English Channel to become a "cemetery".

He agreed with the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on more efforts in the fight against smugglers.

Escape from war and poverty

Many of the people waiting in France to travel to England come from countries in East Africa and the Middle East.

Many have fled war or poverty and are hoping for a job in the UK's black labor market.

In France they usually live under the most difficult conditions, sometimes in the forests around Calais.

It is the declared policy of the government in Paris to keep the migrants who are unwanted from all sides on the move so that slums do not form.

Unauthorized access to the ferries in the port or to the entrance of the Eurotunnel, which leads west of the city towards Great Britain, has been made virtually impossible by fences, barbed wire and video cameras.

lau / dpa / AP / AFP