A 50-year-old man suspected of leading a gang of smugglers involved in the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants found in a lorry in England in 2019 pleaded guilty to manslaughter in London on Friday.
Marius Mihai Draghici, a Romanian citizen, will be convicted at a hearing to be scheduled. He was remanded in custody after his appearance at the Old Bailey Court in London.
The 39 Vietnamese migrants – the youngest of whom were two 15-year-old boys – died of asphyxiation and hyperthermia in the confined space of the container as they were being transported to what they believed to be a new home in the UK.
The horrifying discovery has exposed the workings of illegal immigration networks that thrive on the hope of exiled candidates willing to take all the risks and pay sizable sums.
The leaders of the smuggling group, Ronan Hughes, a 41-year-old Northern Irish transport operator, and Gheorghe Nica, a 43-year-old Romanian national, who are accused of being the organizers of the human trafficking, were each sentenced in January 2021 to 20 prison terms and 27 years Prison for manslaughter and migrant smuggling.
Maurice Robinson, the driver of the truck when the bodies were discovered, was sentenced to 13 years and four months in prison. Eamon Harrisson, the 24-year-old driver who transported the trailer to the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, was sentenced to 18 years in prison and claimed he was unaware of the migrants’ presence on board.
The fallout from this case has led to court cases in several European countries.
A Vietnamese man accused of heading the network’s Belgian cell was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Bruges Criminal Court in early 2022, while French justice ordered a trial of 19 men suspected of being part of the vast illegal immigration network from Vietnam to have participated Europe.