{"id":764318,"date":"2026-09-08T20:50:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T20:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/764318\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T20:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T20:50:13","slug":"fourteen-go-on-trial-over-deadliest-channel-small-boats-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/764318\/","title":{"rendered":"Fourteen go on trial over deadliest Channel small boats disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fourteen suspected people smugglers have gone on trial in Paris for their role in the worst ever small boats disaster in the English Channel.<\/p>\n

In November 2021, at least 30 men, women and children drowned<\/a> when their motorised dinghy deflated and started taking on water halfway between France and the UK.<\/p>\n

The 14 defendants \u2013 mainly Afghan nationals \u2013 are accused of manslaughter and facilitating illegal immigration as part of an organised criminal group.<\/p>\n

Most of them deny the charges. Two of the 14, who are alleged to be leaders of the operation, remain on the run and are being tried in absentia.<\/p>\n

The boat left the French coast on the evening of 23 November 2021, but ran into difficulty in the middle of the Channel. <\/p>\n

One by one the occupants entered the water to try to lessen the weight, but succumbed to the cold and drowned. Only two men survived.<\/p>\n

According to the charge sheet, the defendants helped to launch “a small boat of poor quality, unfit to navigate at sea, overloaded and equipped with inadequate life-jackets”.<\/p>\n

Twenty-seven bodies were found after the boat sank, and another four were confirmed missing.<\/p>\n

Many of the people who died were Iraqi Kurds, but others came from Somalia, Ethiopia, Egypt and Afghanistan. The youngest named victim was seven years old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fourteen suspected people smugglers have gone on trial in Paris for their role in the worst ever small…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-764318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}