Fourteen go on trial over deadliest Channel small boats disaster

Fourteen suspected people smugglers have gone on trial in Paris for their role in the worst ever small boats disaster in the English Channel.

In November 2021, at least 30 men, women and children drowned when their motorised dinghy deflated and started taking on water halfway between France and the UK.

The 14 defendants – mainly Afghan nationals – are accused of manslaughter and facilitating illegal immigration as part of an organised criminal group.

Most of them deny the charges. Two of the 14, who are alleged to be leaders of the operation, remain on the run and are being tried in absentia.

The boat left the French coast on the evening of 23 November 2021, but ran into difficulty in the middle of the Channel.

One by one the occupants entered the water to try to lessen the weight, but succumbed to the cold and drowned. Only two men survived.

According to the charge sheet, the defendants helped to launch "a small boat of poor quality, unfit to navigate at sea, overloaded and equipped with inadequate life-jackets".

Twenty-seven bodies were found after the boat sank, and another four were confirmed missing.

Many of the people who died were Iraqi Kurds, but others came from Somalia, Ethiopia, Egypt and Afghanistan. The youngest named victim was seven years old.

Some family members travelled to Paris for the start of the trial, which is expected to last three weeks.

"Once again [the smugglers displayed] total cynicism. Migrants are not sailors," said Emmanuel Daoud, a lawyer representing many of the families.

"The smugglers know perfectly well what they are doing. They take the deliberate, conscious risk of sending migrants to their deaths."

The defendants are accused of helping to organise the ill-fated journey by lodging and transporting the migrants, supplying the boat they left in, and handling the money they paid.

But many of them insist that they were themselves migrants and that if they were involved it was only under instructions from the real organisers.

The disaster led to enquiries on both sides of the Channel, with questions asked about the failure of British and French boats to rescue the people who died despite repeated calls from the floundering dinghy.

In France, seven military personnel – staff at a maritime rescue centre and on board a navy boat - are under judicial investigation on a possible charge of failing to assist persons in danger.

A judge will decide whether they should stand trial.

A UK inquiry found that HM Coastguard in Dover had limited capacity due to chronic staff shortages, while a surveillance aircraft was not launched due to poor weather conditions.

It also found that there was a widely held belief that migrants calling from small boats exaggerated the distress, meaning the coastguard underestimated the emergency.

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