Ronan Hughes

2 offences

What the court heard

He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and manslaughter in Essex between 11 October 2019 and 22 October 2019. The judge said: "I have no doubt that, as asserted by the Prosecution, the conspiracy was a sophisticated, long-running, and profitable one to smuggle (mainly) Vietnamese migrants across the channel. The conspirators were of various nationalities, in particular Vietnamese, Irish and Romanian, and the conspiracy amounted to professional, organised crime (largely using unregistered phones) committed for a profit motive, which significantly undermined the United Kingdom's attempts to regulate and control immigration. The control of immigration, which affects the social fabric of our country, our economy, and our security, is an area of considerable public concern. For more than 20 years, the Court of Appeal has underlined that offences of facilitating illegal immigration call for deterrent sentences. Today, the prevalence of offences of facilitating illegal immigration across the channel, by one means or another, is such that all defence counsel agree that it is not necessary for me to receive evidence on that issue. ...The manslaughter of the 39 victims (males and females aged, as I have said, from 15 to 44) took place on 22 October 2019 and brought the conspiracy to an end. From early that morning, the victims who had variously been at safe houses in Paris, Brussels and Dunkirk made their way by taxi to a rural location close to an industrial estate in Bierne, in Northern France, where (later in the morning) they were picked up by EH using an otherwise empty and airtight refrigerated container. The refrigerator was, and remained, switched off. The container could only be opened from the outside. After a short stop at Lissewege in Belgium, EH delivered the trailer to Zeebrugge at around 2pm. By 3pm it had been loaded on to a freighter which sailed at around 4pm. From the pick up the temperature inside the trailer began to rise and continued to rise, whilst at the same time the amount of oxygen in the air began to decrease and the carbon dioxide in it began to increase. The temperature eventually rose to around 40 degrees whilst they were at sea - forcing the removal by the victims of their outer clothing in an attempt to cope. There were desperate attempts to contact the outside world by phone (reflected in the recordings that were played in court) and to break through the roof of the container to get fresh air. All were to…

Aggravating and mitigating factors

Planning / Organisation / Sophistication / Professional operation; Persistent / Lengthy / prolonged incident / prolonged period of time

Around this case

• Central Criminal Court Crown Court
• Prosecuted by CPS East of England
• Investigated by Essex Police