ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Fourteen men accused of involvement in the smuggling operation behind one of the deadliest migrant disasters in the English Channel are due to hear the outcome of their trial in Paris on Wednesday, nearly five years after 31 people died or went missing attempting to reach Britain. The defendants have been on trial at the Paris Criminal Court since September 8 over the November 2021 crossing, when an overcrowded inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from northern France toward Britain sank in the Channel. Twenty-seven bodies were recovered from the sea and at least four people were never found. Only two men survived. Most of the victims were Kurds from the Kurdistan Region, alongside migrants from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Somalia, Vietnam and Kurdish areas of Iran. The youngest known victim was a seven-year-old girl. Lawyers representing families of the victims told Rudaw that a verdict is expected Wednesday as the three-week trial concludes. The 14 defendants face charges including involuntary manslaughter, facilitating irregular migration as part of an organized group and criminal conspiracy. French investigators say Afghan and Iraqi Kurdish smuggling networks were involved in arranging the crossing from migrant camps around Grande-Synthe and Calais. Two of the defendants are being tried in absentia. French prosecutors have requested sentences ranging from six months suspended to 10 years in prison. Several defense lawyers have argued that their clients played minor roles in the operation and were not the senior figures who organized the crossing. Most of the defendants deny responsibility for the disaster. The proceedings are also reviving painful questions about what happened in the Channel during the night of November 23 and the following morning, and why help did not reach the migrants despite repeated distress calls. Rudaw reported at the time that the dinghy, carrying more than 30 people, began losing air during the night. One of the two survivors, Mohammed Shekha Ahmad, a Kurd from Qaladze in the Kurdistan Region, told Rudaw that passengers repeatedly called for help as the boat lost air and filled with water. He said he watched people drown around him. Another survivor, Somali national Mohammed Issa Omar, also told Rudaw that only he and an Iraqi man survived the disaster and that most of those aboard were Kurds. Rudaw later reported that the two survivors spent at least 12 hours in the water before being rescued. Of the 27 bodies recovered, 17 were eventually identified as Kurds, including 16 from the Kurdistan Region and one from the Kurdish region of Iran. The case has also revived scrutiny of the response to the migrants' distress calls, although that issue is not part of the criminal trial of the alleged smugglers. A British public inquiry led by Sir Ross Cranston concluded in February that some of the deaths were avoidable. It found that smugglers had provided an unsuitable and overcrowded boat, while a nearby French naval vessel failed to respond to a Mayday relay and UK Coastguard personnel made a series of flawed decisions, including ending the search prematurely. The inquiry identified 27 people who died and four others whose bodies were never recovered, with two survivors. It also found systemic failures linked to staffing shortages and oversight at the UK Coastguard's Dover center. Members of the French military are separately under formal investigation over allegations that they failed to assist people in danger. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the precise sequence of the distress calls was already disputed. Family members told Rudaw that people aboard the boat were still communicating with relatives as the vessel lost air in the early hours of November 24. The survivors later said calls for assistance had been made before the boat finally sank. Sky News also obtained a French coastguard Mayday transmission from the day of the disaster requesting urgent assistance from vessels in the area after people were reported in the water. The two survivors were taken to hospital suffering from hypothermia. According to UK Home Office figures, 18,609 people have arrived in the UK by small boat so far this year, compared with 32,188 over the same period last year. Since 2018, 211,242 people have arrived by small boat. On Monday, French police said three migrants, including a ten year old boy, were crushed to death on a dinghy that was carrying 105 migrants, bringing the total number of deaths to 22 this year according to an AFP tally based on French and British official sources. At least 184 migrants have died in the English Channel since 2018, according to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.
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