A refrigerated truck carrying six illegal migrants was intercepted on Wednesday near Lyon after an alert given by a British journalist in contact with one of them as part of a report.
Among the six passengers in the vehicle, registered in Lithuania, were four women of Vietnamese nationality and two Iraqis, said the Villefranche-sur-Saône public prosecutor’s office, confirming information from the daily The world.
The semi-trailer, which was transporting bananas and heading south, was intercepted around 1:30 p.m. on the A6 motorway, and forced to stop at an area in Dracé, around fifty kilometers north of Lyon, they said. specified the police.
A procedure for “illegal residence assistance” opened
The group of migrants was located thanks to information transmitted to the French authorities by a journalist from the BBC public broadcaster investigating Vietnamese illegal immigration networks.
According to The world, this journalist received a message from one of the passengers who panicked when she felt the temperature drop in the refrigerated truck and sent him the GPS coordinates of the heavy goods vehicle. The driver of the truck was placed in police custody as part of a procedure opened for “aiding illegal stay” by the Villefranche public prosecutor’s office, according to the latter.