Italian police announced on Saturday June 12 that they had arrested Stefan Damian Dragos, a 28-year-old Romanian citizen wanted by Britain in connection with migrant smuggling that resulted in the deaths of 39 Vietnamese, in the trailer of a truck.
Stefan Damian Dragos is accused of providing the truck that transported the migrants to England, according to a police statement. Mr Dragos, who was arrested by police in Milan on the basis of a British arrest warrant, “Belongs to a criminal organization dedicated to illegal immigration”, adds the press release.
The 39 Vietnamese migrants – the youngest of whom were two 15-year-old boys – had died of asphyxiation and hyperthermia in the confined space of the container, as they were transported to Britain, for which they hoped to be new life. The bodies of the 31 lifeless men and 8 women were discovered inside the trailer in October 2019 in east London.
Illegal immigration channels
This macabre discovery had thrown a harsh light on illegal immigration networks that thrive on the hope of candidates for exile ready to take all the risks and pay huge sums of money.
The leaders of the smuggling group Ronan Hughes, a 41-year-old Northern Irish road haulier, and Gheorghe Nica, a 43-year-old Romanian national, accused of being the organizers of the trafficking, were convicted in January, respectively, to twenty and twenty-seven years in prison for manslaughter and smuggling of migrants.
Maurice Robinson, the driver who was driving the truck when the bodies were discovered, was sentenced to thirteen years and four months in prison. Eamonn Harrison, the 24-year-old driver who had taken the trailer to the Belgian port of Zeebrugge and claimed he was unaware of the migrants on board, was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. In Vietnam, seven people were sentenced.
