Over 30 lives were lost when a group of migrants attempted to cross the English Channel on an inflatable boat in 2021, marking the deadliest Channel drowning in modern history.
A group of 14 defendants went on trial in France this week over a 2021 tragedy that saw at least 27 migrants drown, with four other victims still classified as missing.
Prosecutors allege that Afghan and Iraqi-Kurdish smugglers set up the attempted crossing of the English Channel from northern France. The ill-fated trip saw dozens of people board an inflatable dinghy which was not certified for open sea and did not have enough life jackets.
Read AlsoLawsuit filed against French rescuers in Channel tragedy
Most of the passengers were Iraqi Kurds, though the group included Afghan, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Vietnamese nationals. The youngest person onboard was a seven-year-old girl.
Only two men survived the trip.
The defendants are facing charges including involuntary manslaughter, facilitating illegal immigration and criminal conspiracy.
'Everyone panicked'
The two survivors testified that the inflatable boat started taking in water hours into the trip.
"Around 2:30 am, we began bailing water out. But suddenly the boat capsized," Somali national Issa Omar told French investigators.
"Everyone panicked. You could hear sobbing and women screaming."
With the boat flipping over, passengers fell into the water and started drowning. While the vessel managed to send out a distress signal to French and British rescue services, it was nearly 12 hours before the dinghy was located.
Eventually, a French fishing vessel reported bodies floating off Calais.
Two defendants still on the run
Out of 14 suspected smugglers on trial, two remain on the run and would be trialed in absentia. According to the prosecutors, defendants include organizers, transporters and logistics coordinators for the smuggling gangs. Most of them were born in Afghanistan.
In turn, some of the defense lawyers have argued that their clients only played small roles in the events and should not bear criminal responsibility. On Tuesday (September 8), lawyer Marie Guegot pointed out that her client hosted one of the victims at his home before that friend boarded the boat.
"For him, he was hosting a friend from his village in Afghanistan. We don’t have those responsible, the heads of the network (on trial) here," she said.
French soldiers under investigation too
The issue of broader responsibility for the English Channel tragedy has also been widely debated before the start of the trial. Specifically, investigators both in Britain and France questioned why it took so long for rescue vessels to provide assistance.
Earlier this year, a UK probe found that some of the deaths could have been "avoidable" if British and French officials were quicker to respond to the distress call.
The British investigators found that a French vessel failed to respond to a call from the British coastguard, and that the British side also made "a number of flawed decisions" and ended the search for survivors prematurely.
In France, seven members of the nation's military are under investigation for allegedly failing to help.
"This is the first step of the legal process with this trial that concerns the smugglers. And the next step will be the trial, hopefully, for the marines," said Thomas Ricard, one of the lawyers for the victims' families.