A court has convicted 18 people from Belgium who were involved in the 2019 deaths of 39 people from Vietnam whose bodies were found in the back of a container lorry in south east England.
The Bruges correctional court imposed a 15-year jail term on what it described as the Vietnamese leader of the people smuggling gang in Belgium. 13 were given one to 10-year sentences while five were found not guilty.
It is not known if they will appeal against the sentence.
In January 2021, UK courts jailed four men in connection with the human trafficking operation.
The migrants, two aged just 15, were found dead in the town of Grays in October 2019 by lorry driver Maurice Robinson who collected the trailer from the docks.
Robinson (26), from Craigavon, and his boss Ronan Hughes, (41), of Armagh, admitted plotting to people smuggle and 39 counts of manslaughter.
Gheorghe Nica (43), of Basildon, Essex, and Eamonn Harrison (24), from Mayobridge, Co Down, who had collected the victims on the continent, were found guilty of the offences.
Robinson, who also admitted money laundering, was jailed for 13 years and four months. Hughes was sentenced to 20 years in prison, Nica to 27 years and Harrison to 18 years.
The migrants had been crammed into a lorry container shipped from Zeebrugge in pitch black and sweltering conditions and London’s Old Bailey heard how they desperately tried to raise the alarm as they ran out of air before reaching British shores.
The victims, between the ages of 15 and 44, were found on October 23 2019.
The migrants, 28 men, eight women and three children, came from impoverished villages and had paid people-smugglers thousands of dollars to take them on risky journeys to what they hoped would be better lives abroad.
