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Two Chinese to Face Court after 58 Immigrants Die
Two Chinese people will face a British court on Saturday in connection with the horrific deaths of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants who suffocated in the back of a truck while trying to sneak into Britain.
The Chinese defendants, a man and a woman, face charges of conspiracy to facilitate illegal entry to the United Kingdom. The Dutch driver of the truck, Perry Wacker, has been charged with 58 counts of manslaughter and other offences.
Police said the Chinese man You Yi, 38, a chef, and the Chinese woman, 29-year-old Ying Guo, an interpreter, were expected to appear in court on Saturday morning.
"They should be in court sometime around nine o'clock (0800 GMT)," police said.
An inquest in the English coastal town of Dover on Friday heard how 60 Chinese stowaways crammed inside a sealed tomato truck screamed in vain for help after their single air vent was closed.
Two men who survived the nightmare trip from the Netherlands are now under police guard. The identities of the dead -- 54 men and four women -- remain unknown.
Wacker has also been charged with facilitating the illegal entry into Britain of the two survivors of the ill-fated trip, which ended when customs officers at Dover examined the truck in the early hours of Monday morning.
On Friday, coroner's officer Graham Perrin told an inquest in Dover how the immigrants had died.
Over-dressed on a sweltering day and gasping for breath, several had banged on the sides of the trailer with their shoes.
"Some of them took off their shoes and started banging them on the container walls. All of this, sir, proved tragically fruitless," Perrin told the coroner.
"They were now inhaling their own respiratory waste, namely carbon dioxide," he said, adding that death would have occurred between one and five hours after being shut into the airtight metal container.
At his appearance in court in the southern English seaside town of Folkestone on Friday, Wacker, a tall, thick-set man, sat impassively behind a glass screen and spoke only to confirm his name and that he understood the charges.
Wacker was ordered to be held in custody for seven days, when he will appear again at Folkestone magistrates' court.
Efforts to identify the dead will continue. London-based Chinese solicitor, Wah-Piow Tan, has said he has been contacted by people who may be related to the victims and might be able to identify some of the bodies.
But Tan said his clients were too scared to speak out because their own legal status in Britain was "questionable".
The Home Office (Interior Ministry) said it understood the problems facing those who wished to come forward and said it would continue a "fruitful" dialogue it had begun with Tan.
The Dover coroner said he would formally adjourn the inquest into the victims' identity and cause of death for one week, but that police would continue to work to identify the victims.
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