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Dutch Driver Sentenced to 14 Years in Jail for the Deaths of 58 Chinese Immigrants
A Dutch driver was convicted of manslaughter Thursday and sentenced to 14 years in jail for the deaths of 58 Chinese immigrants whose slow suffocation in the back of a tomato truck cast horrifying light on the international trafficking of human beings.
Perry Wacker, 32, was found guilty by a jury at Maidstone Crown Court of 58 counts of manslaughter. Wacker, who was also convicted of four counts of conspiracy, swallowed hard but otherwise showed no reaction to the verdicts.
Ying Guo, 29, of South Woodford, England, a Chinese interpreter who allegedly served as the victims' British contact, was convicted on one count of conspiracy to smuggle immigrants. She was sentenced to six years in prison. Prosecutors said 27 of the dead were carrying her telephone number.
Both had pleaded innocent. Justice Alan Moses said Wacker, who faced a possible life sentence, had "demonstrated cynical exploitation" of the victims. The verdicts followed 13 hours of deliberation by the jury.
Shocked port officials in Dover, England, found the lifeless bodies packed with a shipment of tomatoes in a hot, nearly airless container that had just crossed the English Channel by ferry from Zeebrugge, Belgium on June 18.
The dead Chinese ¡ª 54 men and four women ¡ª had paid tens of thousands of dollars each to Chinese smuggling gangs known as "snakeheads" for the chance to begin a new life in the West. Only two migrants survived.
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