Six smugglers jailed for manslaughter over worst Channel small boats disaster
Thirty-one migrants died when their boat went down in November 2021. The trial found that the guilty men were part of two smuggling networks.
Speaking after the verdict, their lawyer Matthieu Chirez said the decision "comes as a relief for all the civil plaintiffs because it confirms the penal responsibility of the traffickers". He said the trial had "humanised the families of victims".
One family member, Zana Marmand Muhammed, told the court how his younger brother Twana had "wanted to go to England to find a job and because the geopolitical situation with us is dangerous. No-one in the family wanted him to leave, but we could not dissuade him."
Nabi Mustafa Mina, the father of Zanyar who was 19 when he died, told of how he tried to dissuade his son from leaving.
"I said I would help him to get married, I would give him my house, I would divide my salary in two. But no, he said he wanted a better life, that he would get by somehow. I ran out of arguments," he said.
The family-members explained how they had paid a deposit at a bank in Iraqi Kurdistan and then followed their loved ones' progress through Turkey, Italy and then France. In one of the last messages from Twana, he posted a picture of himself at the Eiffel Tower.
The court also heard a statement from one of the two survivors, Issa Omar, read out by his lawyer. Omar said that he "would have liked to appear before the judge but I do not have the strength. Since the wreck I have the impression that part of me disappeared beneath the waves."
His lawyer Matthieu Chirez said that Omar had "clung to floating bodies, to a life-jacket. He survived by keeping his eyes open so as not to go to sleep, and swimming to keep his heart beating".
