A court in the UK sentenced a Romanian man on Tuesday (July 11) to more than 12 years in prison for the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants who suffocated in a truck trailer on their way to England in 2019. 

Marius Mihai Draghici, 50, pleaded guilty to 39 counts of manslaughter and conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration in a case that sparked widespread outrage. 

The victims were between the ages of 15-44 and were from Vietnam. They had died from suffocation after being locked inside a container in the back of a truck that was discovered at an industrial port near London.

Draghici, was reportedly part of an international human smuggling ring and the ringleader’s right-hand man, said UK Justice Neil Garnham in Central Criminal Court known as the Old Bailey. 

According to news reports, Draghici, 50, had fled Britain and was detained by police in Romania last August before being extradited. Draghici is the fifth man to be sentenced in the U.K. 

In 2021, four other gang members were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 13 to 27 years for manslaughter. The reported ringleader, Gheorghe Nica, 46, was handed down the longest sentence. 

Another 18 people were convicted in Belgium, where the Vietnamese ringleader was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Others got one to 10-year terms.

Final hours of 'unimaginable suffering'

Court records show that the victims had each paid about £13,000 (€15,244+) for a “VIP” service to come to Britain. 

That VIP service turned out to be crammed into a sealed airtight container and driven from Dunkirk in France to Zeebruggee in Belgium. From there, the truck was then loaded onto a Britain-bound ferry. 

The container's cooling system had been shut off, leaving the migrants in total darkness to endure scorching temperatures. 

The victims reportedly vainly tried to punch a hole in the container with a metal pole as the temperature inside exceeded 100 degrees F (38.5 C). The migrants slowly and painfully suffocated to death. One forensic expert testified that the would have taken around nine hours for the air in the container to turn toxic. 

Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones KC described the victims’ last hours as having “must (have) entailed unimaginable suffering and anguish”.

The migrants sent messages of goodbye to their family members as they realized that they were slowly going to die there. 

There was no escape and no one could hear their cries, prosecutors said. 

A married couple – Tran Hai Loc and Nguyen Thi Van, 35 – were found lying side by side in the container. The court heard they had paid $7,000 to travel to Hungary to work as fruit pickers. Five days before they died, they had told their families that their plans changed to travel to England. 

Read more: A look at the deadliest migrant suffocation incidents 

Social media broke news to families 

In victim impact statements read out to the court, families described their horror and anguish over their loved one’s suffering. 

The youngest victim, Nguyen Huy Hung, was 15 years old. He had been on his way to live with his parents in Britain and work as a hairdresser. 

In news reports, his father said they were “very shocked” and “trembling” after hearing what happened on social media. 

“We did not believe it was the truth until we saw his body with our own eyes,” he said. “We felt numb and that feeling lasted for many weeks later.” 

Last year, the news agency Associated Press, compiled a list of the deadliest incidents involving migrants trafficked across borders in trucks or shipping containers.

The incident with the highest number of fatalities involved 58 Chinese immigrants who were found dead inside a truck in the English port town of Dover. The Dutch truck had transported the immigrants across the English Channel from Belgium. Two people survived. 

Read more: People smuggling from Vietnam to Europe: The facts