The court described the cause of the disaster as “people driven by greed and complete disregard for human life”. Prosecutors argued that the convicted men helped send out to sea a “substandard” inflatable boat without a certificate, unfit for open-sea navigation, overloaded and without suitable life jackets.
According to the case materials, the boat sank on the night of November 24, 2021, as it tried to cross one of the busiest shipping routes between northern France and Kent in southern England. According to two survivors, after several hours at sea the boat began to deflate and take on water, and passengers fell overboard one by one and drowned despite roughly a dozen desperate calls to French and British rescue services.
The case confirms the deaths of at least 27 people, four others remain missing, and only two survived. The dead were mostly Iraqi Kurds, but among them were also Afghans, Ethiopians, Iranians, Somalis, Vietnamese and Egyptians; the youngest known victim was seven years old, and among the confirmed victims were 15 men, seven women and two teenagers.
The six men received prison terms of six to 10 years for manslaughter, while seven others were found guilty of lesser offenses — aiding illegal migration as part of an organized group and criminal conspiracy. The court also heard that they were linked to Afghan and Iraqi Kurdish smuggling networks that organized migrant crossings to Britain from camps near the French cities of Grande-Synthe and Calais in northern France. One defendant was acquitted, and a separate investigation in France is continuing into seven French military personnel — five employees of the maritime coordination center and two sailors from a patrol vessel; since 2023 they have been under investigation on suspicion of failing to assist a person in danger, and they deny the allegations. The lawyer for one of the victims’ families, Emmanuel Daoud, called the trial “a trial of greed, cynicism and inhumanity”.
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