French court jails six men for manslaughter over mass drowning in Channel

A Paris court has jailed six ⁠men for manslaughter over the deaths of at least 27 people in the worst mass drowning on record from a small-boat crossing in the Channel.Seven other men were ⁠found guilty of lesser smuggling charges with varying degrees of seriousness, including facilitating illegal immigration as part of ⁠an organised gang and criminal conspiracy.Five years on, another four people are still missing.The court heard that the sinking of an inflatable dinghy in November 2021 was caused by “individuals driven by greed, with utter disregard for human life”.Prosecutors said the convicted men helped launch a “substandard small boat, uncertified, unfit for navigation on the open sea, overcrowded and lacking appropriate lifejackets”.Emmanuel Daoud, a lawyer for one victim’s family, called the proceedings a “trial of greed, cynicism and inhumanity”.Twenty-seven people were confirmed dead when their inflatable dinghy sank in the early hours of 24 November 2021. Four people remain unaccounted for.Lawyers and relatives of victims arrive at court in Paris for the trial of the alleged smugglers. Photograph: Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP/Getty ImagesThe victims were mostly Iraqi Kurds, but also included people who were Afghan, Ethiopian, Iranian, Somali, Vietnamese and Egyptian. The youngest known victim was a seven-year-old girl. The confirmed dead included 15 men, seven women and two teenagers.Sentences for the six men found guilty of manslaughter ranged ‌from six to 10 years in prison. For others, sentences ranged from six months suspended to four ​years in prison. The court heard that the men were linked to Afghan and Iraqi-Kurdish smuggling networks ⁠that organised the migrants’ passage to Britain from camps near Grande-Synthe and Calais in northern France. One man was found innocent.According to testimony from the two survivors, the flimsy boat, which had attempted to cross one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes between the northern French coast and Kent in southern England began to deflate and take on water after several hours at sea.Passengers fell overboard and drowned one after another, despite making about a dozen desperate calls for help to French and British rescue services. Only two men survived.For the people onboard the sinking boat, despite several distress calls, it was nearly 12 hours after the first pleas for help before the dinghy was finally found by a French fishing vessel.A separate investigation is continuing in France into seven French military personnel – five members at a maritime rescue coordination centre, and two sailors onboard a patrol vessel. They have been under investigation since 2023 for failing to help a person in danger. They deny the allegations.Zana Mahmand Mohammed travelled from Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan to address the court about his younger brother, Twana, 18, who drowned in the disaster but whose body has never been found.He said: “We’ve been waiting for our brother’s body for five years. I live with the uncertainty of ever finding out what happened. We lost a member of our family. He had a project for another future to live … ”The family had tried to dissuade Twana from leaving home, but he had wanted to find a job and develop his sporting success as a black belt in taekwondo and escape the violence and insecurity of his region.Mohammed said every time he read in the media about other small boats in difficulty, he relived the tragedy. “Destruction is being repeated,” he said.