Vietnamese trafficker jailed for 15 years in Belgium for UK migrant lorry deaths
- Vo Van Hong, 45, was found guilty of leading a Belgian-based people-trafficking operation linked to a lorry full of dead migrants found in England in 2019
- The victims, 31 men and eight women aged between 15 and 44, who were all Vietnamese, died from suffocation and hyperthermia in the confined space of the lorry
A Belgian court sentenced a Vietnamese man to 15 years in prison on Wednesday after convicting him of being the ringleader in the trafficking of 39 migrants found dead in a lorry.
Vo Van Hong, 45, was found guilty of leading a cross-Channel people-trafficking operation that has been linked to a lorry that was found full of corpses on an English industrial estate in October 2019.
He was also fined 920,000 euros (US$1 million dollars) and had close to 2.3 million euros confiscated, Belga wrote.
Seventeen others of unnamed nationality were sentenced in the same trial at the Bruges Criminal Court to between one and 10 years, while five defendants were cleared.
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At least 15 of the 39 dead had passed through the Belgian-based trafficking network, which operated two safe houses in the Anderlecht district of Brussels for migrants heading to Britain.
The 2019 discovery on the Grays industrial estate east of London was one of the worst involving migrants in recent years.
The victims, 31 men and eight women aged between 15 and 44 were all Vietnamese, died from suffocation and hyperthermia in the confined space of the lorry, which arrived on a ferry from Zeebrugge.
Several suspects have already been convicted and incarcerated in Britain and Vietnam in connection with the case. In France, 26 more have been charged and face trial.
In Belgium, Vo was one of 23 suspects – both Belgians and Vietnamese – put on trial after a May 2020 police operation in which several addresses, most in the Brussels region, were raided and Vietnamese suspected of links to the gang were rounded up.
Most of the defendants were allegedly members of the people-smuggling ring. The remainder allegedly were accomplices, used as safe-house guards, grocery shoppers for the migrants or drivers.
Prosecutors said the “very well-organised” gang was specialised in clandestinely transporting people into Europe then Britain for a total fee of 24,000 euros (US$27,000) per person.
