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Refrigerated truck after the body was found in 2019: The convict admitted to having been involved in human smuggling several times
Photo: BEN STANSALL / AFP
Around two and a half years after the death of 39 smuggled Vietnamese by suffocation in a truck on the way to Great Britain, another person involved has been sentenced to almost four years in prison.
The verdict against the 28-year-old Romanian was handed down by a court in London on Monday.
He was supposed to bring the migrants to London, but they were already dead. The Vietnamese had previously arrived in an airtight truck trailer by ferry from Zeebrugge in Belgium to Purfleet in England.
For the order in October 2019, the man wanted to collect 1000 British pounds (almost 1200 euros).
He admitted in court that he had previously been involved in people smuggling on several occasions, the British news agency PA reported.
According to the British local newspaper The Echo, the prosecutor had declared in court that the accused had been part of a "sophisticated, long-standing and profitable conspiracy" in which mainly Vietnamese migrants were smuggled into the United Kingdom by truck.
After the bodies were discovered by an accomplice, the man initially fled the country.
He was later arrested in Italy near Milan and transferred to Great Britain.
Four men were sentenced to lengthy prison terms in January in connection with the case.
The two leaders of the smuggling gang received sentences of 27 and 20 years in prison, respectively.
The driver of the truck was sentenced to 13 years and four months in prison, and a fourth man was sentenced to 18 years.
ime/dpa