San Francisco Frontiers - France tries 14 over deadliest Channel migrant crossing disaster

The defendants, believed to be linked to people-smuggling networks, are accused of playing a role in the sinking in which 27 people, mainly Iraqi Kurds, were confirmed dead when their inflatable dinghy sank in the early hours of November 24, 2021.

Four others are still unaccounted for. Only two men survived the tragedy.

On November 24, 2021, a French fishing vessel reported several lifeless bodies floating in the Channel off Calais, close to British waters.

According to testimony from the two survivors, their flimsy boat began to deflate and take on water after several hours at sea.

Passengers fell overboard and drowned one after another, despite making around a dozen desperate calls for help to French and British rescue services.

The victims, aged between 7 and 46, were mostly Iraqi Kurds, but also included Afghans, Ethiopians and Egyptians.

Thousands of migrants each year seek to reach Britain from France in search of a better life.

- 'Human beings' -

The trial carries particular significance because of the high death toll and the sheer number of civil parties involved, 114 in all, including victims' families and around a dozen relatives who travelled from Erbil in Iraq's Kurdistan region.

The 14 individuals, most of them born in Afghanistan, face charges including manslaughter and facilitating illegal immigration as part of an organised criminal group.

Two of them, including an Afghan man, are the subject of arrest warrants and will be tried in absentia.

The case is also high-profile because of another highly sensitive strand of the investigation, which is still ongoing.

Seven French military personnel, five members at a maritime rescue coordination centre and two sailors aboard a patrol vessel have been under investigation since 2023 for failing to help a person in danger.

A UK inquiry released in February found some of the deaths would have been "avoidable" if British and French authorities had acted sooner to rescue those onboard.

Despite several distress calls, it was nearly 12 hours after the first pleas for help before the boat was finally found by a French fishing vessel.

By that time, most of those on board had drowned.

The separate case could eventually lead to another trial.

"Justice must hold accountable everyone who played a role in this tragedy," said lawyer Matthieu Chirez, who represents 113 civil parties.

Another lawyer, Emmanuel Daoud, expressed hope that the three-week trial would be an opportunity to see would-be migrants not as "statistics or commodities, but human beings in search of a better life."

-'Substandard boat'-

Prosecutors have accused the defendants of helping launch a "substandard small boat, uncertified, unfit for navigation on the open sea, overcrowded and lacking appropriate life jackets."

Liability has also been extended to those accused of transporting, housing or accompanying the victims, actions that formed part of a "chain of successive events" leading to the tragedy, according to investigators.

The defendants have denied being smugglers and disputed their responsibility, or have presented themselves as migrants seeking to make the journey themselves.

However, phone records and location tracking placed several of them near the departure site and linked them to organising crossings to Britain.

The investigation uncovered two migrant-smuggling networks, one Afghan and the other Iraqi.

L.Ramos--SFF