A Belgian prosecutor has called for eight men alleged to have been involved in the fatal smuggling of 13 illegal immigrants in a container from Zeebrugge to Co Wexford to be jailed for between three and 12 years.
Mr Freddy Van Damme told a court in Bruges that the men were "specialists in human trafficking" who earned up to €12 million in a single year from smuggling people from Turkey and south-eastern Europe into the EU.
Summing up the prosecution case, Mr Van Damme described the journey which led to the death of eight people after more than 100 hours in the container, which was opened at Drinagh business park in Co Wexford on December 8th, 2001.
Mobile phone records showed intense communication between seven of the eight defendants, but Mr Van Damme acknowledged that there was no evidence to link Mr Johan Schroven, who drove the container containing the immigrants from a truck stop outside Brussels to the port at Zeebrugge, with the others.
Investigators used mobile phone records to trace the movements of the alleged gang members during 2001, and Mr Van Damme said that there was no doubt that the defendants were part of a large, international organisation with links in a number of European countries.
Mr Karended Guler and his wife, Saniye, paid €25,000 to be smuggled with their two children, aged four and nine, from western Turkey to Britain.
They travelled from Istanbul to Bosnia, and went by train and truck through Austria and Germany to Belgium. Ms Guler had a job earning €40 a month but the family sold all their possessions to pay the smugglers. Ms Guler and her two children died before the container reached Co Wexford.
The prosecutor identified Mr Osgur Doganbaloglu (42), one of two defendants who remain at large, as the central figure in the organisation which ran the human trafficking. "He controlled everything at every stage of the journey and got the money. He was like an illegal tour operator," said Mr Van Damme.
The defendants are charged with human trafficking, manslaughter, membership of a criminal organisation and involuntary bodily harm. The trial is expected to end today.
