UK driver pleads guilty over migrant lorry deaths

Maurice Robinson, 25, admits to manslaughter over deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants

Police officers drive away the lorry in which 39 dead bodies were discovered in October 2019. AFP

A British lorry driver on Wednesday pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of 39 people who were found dead in a refrigerated lorry in south-east England.

Maurice Robinson, 25, was arrested shortly after the bodies of 31 men and eight women from Vietnam were found in the lorry in an industrial zone in Grays, east of London, in October.

The lorry arrived on a ferry from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge in the early hours of October 23, carrying the victims who included two boys aged 15.

They died from lack of oxygen and overheating, post-mortem examinations showed.

Police charged five men, who appeared at a virtual hearing by Skype at the Old Bailey on Wednesday.

Robinson, from Northern Ireland, had already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and acquiring criminal property.

British-Romanian Gheorghe Nica, 43, Romanian national Alexandru-Ovidiu Hanga, 27, and Christopher Kennedy, 23, of Northern Ireland, deny the charges against them.

Valentin Calota, 37, was not asked to enter a plea to the charge of conspiring to assist unlawful immigration.

Migrants can pay smugglers up to $40,000 (Dh146,928)  for the dangerous journey.

In Vietnam, annual per capital income is bout $2,400, the World Bank says.

The victims came from impoverished, remote corners of central Vietnam, a hotspot for people willing to embark on dangerous journeys for money abroad.

Many are smuggled illegally through Russia or China, often owing tens of thousands of dollars to their traffickers and carrying falsified documents.