A Paris court on Wednesday sentenced 13 men to prison for their roles in the deadliest small-boat crossing of the English Channel, in which at least 27 migrants drowned in November 2021.
Six of the men were convicted of involuntary homicide, the French form of manslaughter, and received terms of between six and 10 years, the BBC reported. Seven others were found guilty of lesser smuggling charges, according to The Guardian, in what it described as the worst mass drowning on record from a Channel small-boat crossing.
French prosecutors said the men had organized the voyage of a boat that was unfit for the open sea, overloaded with 31 passengers and without adequate life jackets, according to Al Jazeera.
The dinghy deflated in the middle of the Channel. After a fishing vessel raised the alarm over bodies in the water off Calais, the French authorities recovered 27 dead, among them two teenagers and a child, according to The Associated Press. Four more passengers weren’t recovered.
Most of those aboard were Iraqi Kurds and Afghans, and only two men survived. Investigators traced the operation to Afghan and Iraqi Kurdish smuggling networks based near Grande-Synthe and Calais, on the French coast, Reuters reported.
In its ruling, the court said the case showed “the dramatic consequences of the methods used by smugglers driven by greed,” men it said were “profiting from the vulnerability of exile candidates,” according to The Associated Press.