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Britain Jails Smugglers in Deaths of 39 Vietnamese Migrants in Container

Associated Press

   LONDON - Four people-smugglers convicted of killing 39 people from
   Vietnam who died in the back of a container truck as it was shipped to
   England were sentenced Friday to between 13 and 27 years in prison.

   The victims, between the ages of 15 and 44, were found in October 2019
   inside a refrigerated container that had traveled by ferry from Belgium
   to the eastern England port of Purfleet. The migrants had paid
   people-smugglers thousands of dollars to take them on risky journeys to
   what they hoped would be better lives abroad.

   Instead, Judge Nigel Sweeney said, "all died in what must have been an
   excruciatingly painful death" by suffocation in the airtight container.

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