Eighteen of the nineteen defendants tried for their participation in a vast illegal immigration network from Vietnam to Europe were sentenced in Paris to sentences ranging from suspended sentence to ten years’ imprisonment, Friday November 10.
Among them, four Vietnamese were found guilty of involuntary homicide and were sentenced to nine to ten years’ imprisonment, accompanied by permanent ban from the national territory in the so-called “mass grave truck” case, in which thirty -nine migrants were found dead in England on the night of October 22 to 23, 2019.
“You were involved at the forefront of organizing crossings for people in precarious situations in the hope of a better lifedeclared the president of the court, Carole Bochter. You created the conditions that led to the deaths of these people. If there had been fewer of them, perhaps they would have survived. »
For Tony’s lawyer, sentenced to ten years in prison, this sentence is a real “massive blow”. “We therefore consider that hosts have the same responsibility as a smuggler”declared to Agence France-Presse Me Gaspard Lindon.
The court sentenced the four other Vietnamese defendants – including two absent from the trial and considered to be on the run – responsible for organizing the transport and accommodation of the migrants, to sentences of one to ten years in prison.
A case that highlights a vast network
For more than three weeks, nineteen defendants were on trial in Paris for aiding the entry, movement or illegal stay of a foreigner in France, committed as part of an organized gang, as well as for criminal association. Offenses punishable by ten years of imprisonment. All the other defendants were acquitted for criminal association but were convicted of aiding illegal residence committed by an organized gang.
“The prior agreement in an organized gang seemed to be characterized via meetings between members of the network, telephone contacts, apartment rentals, compensation systems”declared President Bochter.
The sentences handed down against seven taxi drivers of French, Algerian or Moroccan nationality range from six months’ suspended prison sentence to three years’ imprisonment, two of which are suspended, accompanied by fines of 2,000 to 3,000 euros. “The court considered that you knowingly participated in these facts for a broader, purely lucrative purpose”underlined Mme Bochter during the deliberations. An eighth taxi driver, of French nationality, was completely acquitted. “You only understood at the finish of the second race. The intentional element of the offense is missing”argued the court.
Concerning the three owners of apartments where the migrants had stayed, two Chinese and a Frenchman, the sentences range from six to twelve months in prison, with fines of 5,000 to 10,000 euros. The lawyers of the civil parties, who represent the families of seven victims, were delighted that this trial was able to “shed light on the dangerousness of the activity of these networks which are today severely repressed by the courts”.
Other convictions in England and Belgium
Thirty-one men and eight women, aged 15 to 44, all from Vietnam, got into a trailer in northern France on the morning of October 22, 2019. The container had left the Belgian port of Zeebrugge in direction of England where the macabre discovery took place after a night of travel, on October 23, 2019, in the industrial zone of Grays, east of London. The migrants were found dead of asphyxia and hyperthermia.
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Alongside France, legal proceedings were carried out in the United Kingdom, Vietnam and Belgium. In London, a Romanian in his forties designated as the leader of the network was sentenced in January 2021 to twenty-seven years in prison for involuntary homicide and migrant smuggling. Other suspects, notably the successive drivers of the truck, received twelve to twenty years of imprisonment.
In Belgium, a Vietnamese accused of having been the head of the Belgian cell of the network was sentenced to fifteen years in early 2022.