Death was at the end of "Noold Straete Road". A dead end, like an omen of the tragic journey which awaited these candidates for exile, lost at the bottom of an industrial zone of Bierne (North). It was in this town near Dunkirk that, on the morning of October 22, 2019, 39 Vietnamese migrants boarded what will be nicknamed “the horror truck”. The following night, all will be found dead asphyxiated in the refrigerated semi-trailer on its arrival near London (United Kingdom). 31 men and 8 women, aged 15 to 44, who had fled the misery of their villages in Vietnam for a country perceived as El Dorado in terms of jobs.
Nine months after this tragedy which moved the world, the investigation revealed the involvement of a vast criminal network established in France. A channel for the transport of clandestine Vietnamese to England which operated before the tragedy, went to sleep after it, then resumed its activities shortly before containment. Organizers, hosts, drivers: seven people were indicted on May 29, then four others on July 3 in Paris for various offenses including “manslaughter” and “trafficking in human beings in an organized gang”. "If I had known that they could risk death, if I had not been so naive, I would not have agreed to do anything", regretted one of the suspects in custody.
The French investigations began discreetly on November 6 under the code name “Butterfly”. Using data from the mass grave truck's GPS tracker provided by UK authorities, police from the Central Office for the Suppression of Irregular Immigration and the Employment of Untitled Aliens (OCRIEST) discover the vehicle has arrived at the port of Calais (Pas-de-Calais) on the evening of October 16 from the English county of Kent. Over the following days, he made several round trips between France and Belgium. According to the boundaries of his telephone line, it is Eamonn Harrison, a 23-year-old Irishman charged across the Channel, who is driving.
“They all looked young, under 35”
Investigators are convinced that the driver loaded the 39 victims at the end of the commercial area of Bierne, near a farmhouse hidden by vegetation. Because on October 22, he parked there from 10:50 a.m. to 12:01 p.m. before heading straight for the Belgian border and the port of Zeebrugge, where he will drop the trailer with his stowaways piled up and suffocating inside in a boat for England. The owner of the French farm being 88 years old and disabled, the police question her carer. She remembers being intrigued that morning by a taxi passing by to drop off nine Asian-type people. These migrants immediately took refuge in an agricultural shed across the street.
"Then I saw a large white refrigerated type truck arrive, without registration with long bars on the back door, from the cul-de-sac," Dunkirk tells investigators. The migrants rushed out of the hangar, opened the rear door of the trailer and climbed inside. There was a lady wearing a beige quilted puffer jacket. They all looked young, under 35. The truck left without the driver getting out. "
The nursing assistant had even alerted the gendarmes who, on their arrival, had only found two Vietnamese and an Albanian lost and silent on their fate: probably clients who missed the convoy and saved from death in extremis ...
An express ballet of taxis
The surveillance cameras of companies installed in Bierne clearly show the arrival of the semi-trailer registered GTR1 28D but the loading area of illegal immigrants is not visible. By viewing the images, the investigators, on the other hand, made a major discovery: nine taxis in total - six French and three Belgians - pass in the same time slot. An express ballet which involves drop-offs of passengers. To try to identify the drivers, the police will, this time, analyze the movements of the phones of the victims found in the horror truck.
We learn that twenty-one of them arrived in the morning at Bierne de Créteil (Val-de-Marne), four from Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis), seven from the north of the France without the location being able to be specified, two from the 13th arrondissement of Paris and two from Belgium. Two Vietnamese migrants had just arrived in France via Roissy airport when others had been staying for weeks all over the place: Marne, Pays de la Loire, Paca ...
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By overlapping, the first identities of suspects fall. "A comparison of the masses of telephone data from the loading zone in Bierne, then with the departure points in the Paris region, made it possible to highlight two active mobile numbers that do not belong to a victim", record the investigators in a report. These are the lines of two Parisian taxi drivers: Mohamed, 39, and Anis, 42. A third driver is confused by his contacts with three victims: Sergio, 33 years old. The professional vehicles of the trio correspond to those seen on the videos in Bierne: a Toyota Prius, a Citroën Jumpy, a Mercedes Vito.
Recruitment on social networks or by word of mouth
This advance allows the police to then identify two men who order the disputed races of migrants to the drivers. Calling themselves "Tony" and "Hoang", these Vietnamese in an irregular situation are suspected of being the main organizers of the industry. Discreet, the two illegals aged 36 and 28, living in Val-de-Marne, communicate with Franco-Vietnamese translation software and through the secure Viber application. The operation of the French and German lines of "Tony" reveals that he curiously fled to Germany for several weeks after the discovery of the horror truck before returning to the Paris region.
According to the investigation, Tony, Hoang and a third accomplice called Thanh recruited candidates for English exile on social media via coded ads or word-of-mouth in the Vietnamese community. The latter reached France via China and / or Eastern Europe, were lodged briefly in hideouts - two in particular avenue du Général Pierre de Billaute and rue Claude-Perrault in Créteil - before being taken on the day of the crossing in various loading points between Pas-de-Calais and the North by unscrupulous taxi drivers.
On the spot, they climbed in the back of heavyweights accomplices for a perilous crossing of the Channel. The cost: between 20 and 24,000 euros per crossing. Once in England, migrants were detained while their families in Vietnam made the transfers. Hoang would even have an accomplice in the country to "put pressure" on them.
After the tragedy, no more organized trips for months
By placing this vast network of wiretaps, the police hear Vietnamese worried that one of their relatives is among the 39 victims of the truck. “He was in the port of Dunkirk and I haven't heard from him since. Why did he leave when he has a stable job? », Laments the brother of a dead migrant. The smugglers are annoyed at the idea of the police interfering in their affairs. “If she was part of the number 39, it's quieter. With the 39 there, she is silent (sic), ”thus tries to reassure himself a cynical suspect, preferring that his client of barely 18 years old is dead rather than arrested. Which will indeed be the case.
For months after the tragedy, no more trips will be organized. Until the network resumed operations in early March out of greed, including after travel restrictions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. To minimize the risks, passages are now made with a reduced number of migrants hidden in truck cabs - and more at the back - or in the trunk of private cars. Four successful passages to England are recorded between March 5 and May 19, 2020 but seven attempts fail. This generates some tension on the haggling of taxi rides which could amount to 800 euros previously.
"They are going to get screwed because now the borders are seriously controlled," exclaims a driver over the phone, annoyed by the drop in prices charged by Tony. He is in regular contact with mysterious sponsors in the UK who seem to provide truck drivers, GPS coordinates of loading areas and timetables.
"I did not cause the death of anyone"
On May 26, the OCRIEST police launched a first crackdown on the network. In police custody, Tony and Hoang deny being at the head of a human trafficking network. The two men were however arrested at their apartments in Choisy-le-Roi and Créteil in the company of six and three Vietnamese undocumented migrants, respectively, who wanted to reach England. Tony claims to have arrived in France only a month after crossing the mass grave truck, which would put him out of the question.
“I didn't cause anyone's death. Regarding manslaughter, I do not know what you are talking about ", protests this father of three children in front of the police officers, evoking the idea of a mistake with" a half-brother who [him] looks a lot ". As for the presence of illegals at his home, he evokes simple roommates. And if he is the only one occupying a single room, suggesting that he plays an important role in the group, it is only because he "grinds his teeth at night" and his guests disturb him "by playing games. late video games ”. "Rude parades", say the investigators, who stress that testimonies and overwhelming eavesdropping contradict him.
For his part, Hoang describes himself as… a simple migrant also dreaming of crossing the Channel. According to his words, he was to board the horror truck on October 22 but gave it up for lack of money. “I swear to you that I was almost one of the victims. If I lie, I would be run over by a motorcycle, ”he told investigators. Which are very dubious in view of its explicit orders given to taxi drivers, its five SIM cards and its collections of money from illegal families on social networks. Confronted with a photo of a victim whom he would have sent to his death, he lets go: “I don't see why I would be moved, I didn't know her. At the time I was in the same situation as this young woman. Tony and Hoang's lawyers, Mes Antoine Ory and Dylan Slama, did not wish to speak.
“They don't seem to care at all. They are monsters! ”
As for the taxi drivers, all repeat that they were unaware of having transported victims of the mass grave. “For me, I was doing my taxi job,” Anis pleads. I did not transport these people to lead them to death. I did not expect to find myself in international traffic. I saw these people as human beings, not commodities. "His lawyer, Me Juliette Chapelle, insists:" We must clearly distinguish the responsibilities of each and not take the pretext of qualifying network to derive a collective responsibility. This is the whole difficulty in these cases: preventing the intentions and acts of some from being attributed to others, through the effect of a collectivization of offenses. "
The drivers nevertheless admit having turned a blind eye to the quality of their passengers as undocumented migrants by tempting easy money. "I saw that these people traveled with very little business, plastic bag and food," explains Mohamed in custody, valuing more than 7,000 euros his earnings in 16 or 17 races after being approached at the end 2018 by the network in the middle of the street in Vincennes. "Stunned" to have taken charge of three young men from the horror truck, when Tony had promised him that they were part of another sector, the driver is angry: "When I see Tony, when I see the one you call Hoang, they eat, they laugh. They don't seem to care at all. They are monsters! ".
"It is a migratory drama in which some drivers have found themselves embroiled in a thousand leagues to imagine the fatal outcome that awaited the people they were able to convey for a moment", supports his lawyer, Me Pierre-François Feltesse. A handful of other taxi drivers and network hosts will in turn be arrested during a second operation on July 1.
The “Butterfly” file would only be the emerged part of a sprawling illegal immigration network: the investigations revealed ramifications with many cells implanted in France, Belgium, England…
