6 people traffickers sent to prison for roles in deadly Channel crossing
Oct. 1 (UPI) -- Six people smugglers were sentenced in Paris to prison terms of between six and 10 years for causing the deaths of 31 migrants, including a young child, in 2021 in the deadliest-ever incident in the English Channel involving a small boat.
The six were found guilty Wednesday of "involuntary homicide" for their roles in a joint enterprise organized by two smuggling rings -- one Iraqi Kurd and the other Afghan -- in November 2021 to smuggle the mostly Iraqi-Kurd migrants from France to England in an unseaworthy and overloaded boat.
The boat later sank with the loss of all but two of those aboard. A rescue operation was launched after a French fishing boat reported bodies in the water off the coast of northern France. The bodies of four of the migrants were never found.
Two of those convicted were tried and sentenced in absentia including the leader of the Afghan ring, Obaidullah Maroofkhel, who was sentenced to 10 years, along with one other defendant.
Seven other defendants were handed sentences of up to four years for hiding migrants, moving them through France to a migrant camp near Calais dubbed "the jungle" and assisting on the night the boat was launched from a beach in northern France.
The charges included criminal conspiracy and enabling illegal immigration as part of an organized gang.
One was acquitted of the charges.
The four-week trial heard from family-members that those killed, who also included Iranian-Kurds, Afghans and an Egyptian, an Iranian Kurd and a Vietnamese citizen, wanted to go to England to find work or because the situation in their home countries was unsafe.
Two families said they paid a deposit into an account at an Iraqi Kurdistan bank and then tracked their loved ones' journey via Turkey, Italy and France.
Seven members of the French armed forces who were in a regional sea rescue center or on board a navy vessel were the subject of a separate criminal investigation into allegations they ignored distress calls from the boat.
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