It was a tragedy based on the "cynical exploitation" of people seeking a better life, and yesterday a Dutch lorry-driver, Perry Wacker (33), was sentenced to 14 years for the manslaughter of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants who suffocated in his truck last June.
In a unanimous verdict at Maidstone Crown Court, Wacker was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to six years for each person, to run concurrently. He was also sentenced to eight years for conspiring to smuggle people into Britain, to run consecutively.
A Chinese interpreter, Ying Guo (30), of Essex, who acted as a contact for the Chinese Snakehead gangs behind the attempt to smuggle the group into Britain, was sentenced to six years for conspiring to facilitate the illegal entry of immigrants.
Hoping for a better life in Britain, 60 young people paid the Snakehead gangs, left China and criss-crossed Europe before starting the final leg of their journey at Zeebrugge.
The harrowing story ended far from China on June 19th last year when customs officers who searched Wacker's lorry at Dover docks discovered the bodies of 54 men and four women, and the two men who survived, hidden behind a cargo of tomatoes.
Wacker, who had boarded a ferry at Zeebrugge with his lorry, closed the only air vent to the refrigerated container when the ferry left the port and "sealed the fate" of the 58 men and women.
They had about five hours of oxygen for a journey that would take more than six, and, as they suffocated, Wacker ate a meal of roast lamb and rice and watched television on an upper deck.
In their final minutes in the back of the lorry, the group gave up banging on the walls and calling out for help, and panic gave way to resignation. Piecing together what happened next, Kent Police said in a harrowing statement: "They settled down, held hands and ate tomatoes because in China it is believed that you should not die on an empty stomach. You should not be a hungry ghost."
Wacker would have been paid about 1,000 guilders (£300 sterling) for transporting each immigrant, about £17,500 in total. But that was only a fraction of the £1.2 million the immigrants paid to the Chinese Snakehead gang to smuggle them from China to Europe with the promise of a better life.
The immigrants had paid the gang deposits of up to 10,000 RMB (about £10,000) which in the case of one of the survivors, Mr Ke Su Di, was the equivalent of 10 months' wages. The remaining payment of 20,000RMB was payable on arrival in Britain, with the explicit threat of violence against them or their families if they did not come up with the money.
Passing sentence on Wacker and Guo, Mr Justice Moses said people involved in human trafficking were committing a serious, organised crime: "They demonstrate cynical exploitation of those that do not know better or those that want to better themselves."
Speaking at a press conference after the verdict, one of the Kent Police officers who led the eight-month investigation, Det Chief Insp Bob Nelson, said Wacker was "much more than a driver" and knew he was carrying a human cargo. Pouring scorn on the Snakeheads with their promises of a life of "fast cars and large houses", Mr Nelson said they were motivated by one thing, money.