A man who piloted a small boat carrying migrants to Britain from France in December 2022 was on Monday found guilty of manslaughter after four men died during the attempted crossing.
Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Ibrahima Bah was also convicted of one count of facilitating a breach of immigration law.
Bah was pilot of the inflatable boat which started taking on water shortly after setting sail, witnesses from among the 39 people who survived said. The boat then punctured and ripped apart and the survivors were rescued by a fishing vessel.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made stopping the thousands of migrants attempting to get to Britain in overcrowded small boats one of his priorities, saying the journeys are dangerous and benefit the criminal gangs who run them.
The prosecutors said Bah continued to head to British waters despite the boat taking on water and being unsafe.
“Any reasonable person would have recognised that by piloting such an ill-equipped and overloaded boat in such dangerous circumstances, there was an obvious risk of serious harm to the passengers,” Libby Clark from the CPS said.
“As a result of Bah’s actions, four men tragically lost their lives in the Channel that night.”
Bah claimed to have sailed boats before and gained free passage for the crossing through those claims, the CPS said, adding that the others onboard had paid thousands of euros to make the journey.
Of the four dead, only the identity of one is known, while the exact number of deaths is also not clear, the CPS said.
The CPS said there was uncertainty over Bah’s age but the court had determined he was over 18 and he had accepted the finding of the court.
(Reuters)