Two men tried in London in the refrigerated truck case where 39 Vietnamese migrants were found dead in England in 2019 were found guilty of manslaughter on Monday.
Gheorghe Nica, 43, accused of being a key traffic organizer, and Eamonn Harrison, a 24-year-old truck driver who escorted the trailer part of the journey, had been on trial since early October by the London Criminal Court of the Old Bailey.
Both disputed the manslaughter charges.
Their sentences will be pronounced later.
They face life imprisonment.
On October 23, 2019, the bodies of 31 men and eight women, including two 15-year-old teenagers, were found aboard a trailer in the industrial area of Grays, east London.
Two other suspects pleaded guilty
The container came from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.
The victims died of asphyxiation and hyperthermia, due to the heat and lack of oxygen in the enclosed space of the container.
The two main suspects, Maurice Robinson, who was driving the truck when the bodies were discovered, and Ronan Hughes, a North Irish man in his forties suspected of having organized the movement of the drivers involved in the traffic, have meanwhile pleaded guilty and will do so. 'subject to a subsequent hearing to determine their sentence.
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Many of the victims of this tragedy were from a poor region in central Vietnam, where families are running into thousands of dollars in debt to send one of their own to the United Kingdom, via clandestine channels, in the hope that they will find gainful employment there.