Vo Van Hong is condemned for playing a leading role in the trafficking of migrants who resulted in the death of thirty-nine Vietnamese migrants in a truck discovered in Grays, east of London, in 2019.
Le Monde with AFP
“A 45-year-old Vietnamese was sentenced by the Correctional Court of Bruges, Wednesday, January 19, to fifteen years in prison, for playing a leading role in the trafficking of migrants who resulted in the death of several tens of his compatriots in 2019.
The bodies of thirty-nine Vietnamese migrants – 31 men and eight women, aged 15 to 44 – had been found on October 23, 2019 at the back of a truck in the Grays Industrial Zone, at the East London. They were dead of asphyxia and hyperthermia in the confined space of the container, while they were transported to Great Britain.
Vo Van Hong, which is one of the 23 people judged in Belgium, was considered in the Belgian component of the investigation as the leader of the “criminal organization” having acted since Brussels. The sentence pronounced corresponds to that requested by the federal prosecutor’s office in his indictment, namely the maximum sentence provided for these facts. VO VAN HONG has also been fined by nearly one million euros.
A network accused of organizing “at least 130 transport” of migrants
The container had arrived in Britain from the Belgian port of Zeebrugges. The investigation then established that at least fifteen of the thirty-nine occupants had been taken care of in Belgium on October 22nd, before a detour by Bierne, in the north of France, where the group would have hidden in this trailer.
The network had two placases in the Brussels town of Anderlecht, where the aspirants were gathered at a clandestine passage to the United Kingdom having previously transmitted by Germany or the Netherlands. According to the Prosecution, this network would have organized “at least 130 transport” from South-East Asia to England, each exile disbursed on average 24,000 euros in several installments.
The parquet was “convinced” that Vo Van Hang had acted as “Leader of the Belgian cell”; What the person concerned strongly defended during the trial. He claimed to be “a victim” of the organization.
A trial is profiled in France
The Grays tragedy had thrown a raw light on clandestine immigration channels that thrive on the hope of aspirants to exile ready to take all risks and to pay faremoms. Many victims were from a poor region of the center of Vietnam, where families are heavily integrated in order to send one of theirs in the United Kingdom in the hope of a better life.
Judicial proceedings have been initiated in at least four countries. In the United Kingdom, seven men have already been sentenced in January 2021 to sentences ranging from three to twenty-seven years in prison. These include men who were responsible for organizing the rotations of drivers, part of the off-treated activity by the criminal organization to a North Irish transport company.
Among these seven convicts, Eamonn Harrison, a North Irish road driver aged twenty years, was sentenced to an 18-year prison sentence for conveying the trailer on the continent until Zeebrugges . He assured during his trial, which took place in London, that he ignored the presence on clandestine.
In Vietnam, four men were also sentenced from September 2020 to sentences ranging from two and a half to seven and a half years in prison.
Another trial is also proficient in France. At least 26 people were indicted in the survey open in Paris in May 2020. Two major waves of arrests then took place simultaneously, one in Ile-de-France, the other in Belgium.