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Post by Admin on Oct 28, 2019 7:24:44 GMT
Pham Thi Tra My paid £30,000 to be smuggled to Britain from her home in one of Vietnam’s poorest provinces, but her family now believe her three-week journey has ended in tragedy. There are feared to be a number of Vietnamese nationals among the victims, sources close to the investigation confirmed to The Daily Telegraph, despite police originally saying that they believed the migrants were Chinese. The family of a Vietnamese man, Nguyen Dinh Luong, 20, last night said that they were concerned that he also may have been on the lorry as they had not heard from him since Tuesday. One community group in the UK said it had been contacted by at least 10 families, while an NGO based in Vietnam said seven sets of relatives had been in touch in an attempt to discover whether their loved ones were among those who had been locked inside the refrigerated lorry. At least six of the 39 people found dead in a lorry trailer in Essex may have been from Vietnam. The BBC knows of six Vietnamese families who fear their relatives are among the victims. They include Pham Thi Tra My, 26, who has not been heard from since she sent text messages on Tuesday saying she could not breathe. A man was earlier arrested at Stansted Airport on suspicion of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people. The 48-year-old from Northern Ireland is the fourth person to be arrested in connection with the investigation.
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Post by Admin on Oct 28, 2019 18:39:45 GMT
Three people arrested in connection with the deaths of 39 people found dead inside a lorry in Essex have been released on bail. The suspects, two men and a woman, had been held on suspicion of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people after the discovery in Grays last Wednesday. Lorry driver Maurice Robinson, 25, is due to appear in court on Monday. Meanwhile, families in Vietnam face an anxious wait to find out if their loved ones were among the dead. Those bailed were a 46-year-old man from Northern Ireland, who was arrested at Stansted Airport on Friday, and Joanna and Thomas Maher, both 38, from Warrington, Cheshire. Mr Robinson, of Laurel Drive, Craigavon, Northern Ireland, has been charged with 39 counts of manslaughter as well as people trafficking, immigration and money laundering offences.
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Post by Admin on Oct 29, 2019 7:11:31 GMT
A YOUNG Vietnamese woman who texted her mum "I'm dying" while in a freezing container with 38 others had been deported from Britain just days earlier, her family has claimed. Pham Thi Tra My, 26, is thought to be among the dead stowaways tragically discovered in a freezer lorry trailer in Essex after messaging "I can't breathe. Mum, I'm very sorry." Her brother today told Vietnamese media it was the second time the young woman had been trafficked to Britain after they paid smugglers £30,000. And her family had begged her not to carry out the difficult journey, but she had decided to take the risk so she could find a job to help pay back the huge debt. Pham's brother said: "She was arrested a few days ago [in Britain] and they returned her to France. Now we heard she might have died." Her dad added: "We tried to talk her out of it because it would be a very difficult journey - but she said: 'If I don't go, the family would stay in a difficult situation because of the debt'. "So she took a risk and we had to agree. We are in shock. I cannot explain our pain. We were all devastated. If I had known she would go by this route, I would not have let her go." They said they had believed they had paid the vast amounts of money for her to travel the "VIP route" which would see her travel in a car. But instead, they fear she is among the eight women and 31 men found dead in Grays, Essex, after the container travelled through the port of Zeebrugge in Belgium. The last time they heard from her, the young woman texted: "I’m sorry Mum, my path to abroad didn’t succeed.
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Post by Admin on Oct 31, 2019 7:49:32 GMT
Stories and photos of those thought to have died in the refrigerated lorry found in England last week often lay a trail back through France. Like Nguyen Van Hung, who was last seen leaving Marseille for Paris. His father in Vietnam told us he had got a phone call from the "organisers" at 07:00 Vietnam time, just after the lorry had arrived in the UK. They said his son would soon call him, after which the balance of £10,000 ($12,900; €11,500) must be paid. No call came. And when Hung's father tried to call them back, the number was not working. Nguyen Dinh Luong had also been living in France for the past 18 months, working in a Paris restaurant. Ten days ago, he called his relatives in Vietnam to tell them he was leaving for the UK. His father told us he had tried to stop him.b Last week, with Luong still missing, doctors took blood samples from the family. "The boarding places change all the time," says Thi Hiep Nguyen, one of France's leading experts on Vietnamese trafficking. "It's quicker if they can find a truck that's going directly from Belgium or Germany, and they can avoid Paris. But only the richest can afford to go that way." Hiep's report into the networks here quotes a Vietnamese smuggler, arrested in France in 2012, who said the money went to a "big boss" in Paris. "They're not just in Paris, they're everywhere," she told me. "There are bosses in every country in Europe, including the UK. There are a lot of them around Paris. They change location all the time, but generally around the southern suburbs."
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Post by Admin on Nov 5, 2019 4:45:49 GMT
Eight suspects have been held in Vietnam after 39 people were found dead in a lorry in Essex. The arrests came as a team of Vietnamese officials arrived in Britain to help formally identify the 31 men and eight women. The suspects are being held in relation to people smuggling offences, the director of police in the Nghe An province in north-central Vietnam said. Two people were arrested in the Ha Tinh province of Vietnam last week. The victims were discovered in a refrigerated lorry trailer on an industrial estate in Grays on 23 October. On Friday, Essex Police said all 39 people were believed to be Vietnamese. The force initially said it believed they were Chinese.
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