The Old Bailey Court in London recently  jailed four people-smugglers for a combined 78 years after 39 Vietnamese migrants smuggled to the UK were found dead in the back of a lorry.

Ringleaders Gheorghe Nica, 43, and Ronan Hughes, 41, and drivers Maurice Robinson, 26, and Eamonn Harrison, 24, were give imprisonment sentences on the day.

Nica was given 27 years, Hughes got 20 years in prison, Harrison was sentenced to 18 years, and Robinson was jailed for 13 years and four months - all for 39 counts of manslaughter and a people-smuggling conspiracy.

On 23 October, 2019, the bodies of 39 Vietnamese were discovered in the back of a refrigerated lorry at an industrial estate in Grays in Essex, near London.

Autopsies concluded that the provisional cause of the death of the victims was a combination of hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation and hyperthermia, or overheating in an enclosed space.

Source: VNA