We know a little more since the tragedy that occurred on August 12 in the Channel. That day, six Afghans died in the sinking of a boat of exiles trying to reach England by the Strait of Pas-de-Calais. These have been identified, a judicial source said on Friday. They are six men aged 21 to 34, said this source.
According to the first elements of the investigations carried out by the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime (Junalco) under the supervision of two Parisian investigating judges, the makeshift boat had suffered “engine damage”. The canoe was “torn at sea”, with passengers “for the most part” without life jackets, explained the Paris prosecutor’s office.
Several incarcerations
The alert was given on August 12 around 4:20 a.m. by a commercial vessel which had contacted the Regional Operational Center for Surveillance and Rescue (Cross) Gris Nez, according to a press release from the maritime prefecture (Premar) of the Channel and the North Sea. Several ships then went to the area. A helicopter and a maritime surveillance plane, among others, had also been mobilized. Thirty-eight people were rescued in French waters and twenty-three in British waters.
Four people were indicted in France a few days after the sinking for homicide and involuntary injuries by manifestly deliberate violation of an obligation of safety or prudence, aid to illegal stay in an organized gang and association of criminals. They were incarcerated.
Deadliest shipwreck
Among them, two Iraqis born in 1980 are suspected of belonging to “the illegal immigration network that organized the transport of migrants”, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office. The other two, two Sudanese aged 17 and 26, are suspected of having participated “in the transport of passengers in dangerous conditions, in return for a preferential rate on their own passage”, he added.
This shipwreck is the deadliest since the one that occurred in November 2021, when at least 27 migrants perished in the Strait of Pas-de-Calais.