Published on
Fourteen defendants go on trial in France on Tuesday over a 2021 Channel crossing that killed 31 people, including a seven-year-old, in the worst small-boat disaster involving migrants in those waters.
Prosecutors allege the accused, said to have ties to smuggling operations, bear responsibility for the sinking that claimed 27 confirmed lives — most of them Iraqi Kurds — when an overloaded dinghy went down in the early hours of 24 November, 2021.
Four victims have never been found, and just two men made it out alive.
That morning, a French fishing boat spotted bodies drifting in the Channel near Calais, not far from British territorial waters. The two survivors later described how the flimsy vessel started losing air and taking on water after hours at sea, with passengers being swept overboard and drowning one by one — this despite roughly a dozen frantic calls placed to both French and British rescue authorities.
Those who died ranged in age from seven to 46 and came mainly from Iraqi Kurdistan, and included Afghan, Ethiopian and Egyptian nationals among the dead.
Distress calls ignored by authorities
Given the scale of the loss of life and the involvement of 114 civil parties — among them bereaved families and roughly a dozen relatives who made the trip from Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan — the trial has drawn considerable attention.
Most of the 14 defendants, the majority Afghan nationals, face charges of manslaughter and organised facilitation of illegal immigration. Two, including one Afghan national, will be tried in absentia under active arrest warrants.
Adding to the case’s profile is a separate, still-unresolved inquiry. Since 2023, seven members of the French military — five staff at a maritime rescue coordination centre and two crew members of a patrol boat — have been investigated for failing to render assistance to someone in peril.
A UK government inquiry published in February concluded that faster action by French and British authorities could have prevented some of the deaths.
Nearly 12 hours passed between the initial distress calls and the moment a French fishing vessel finally located the boat — by then, most aboard had already drowned.
Matthieu Chirez, an attorney representing 113 of the civil parties, said accountability must extend to everyone who played a role in the tragedy.
Fellow lawyer Emmanuel Daoud voiced hope that the three-week proceedings would encourage the public to see migrants not as “statistics or commodities, but human beings in search of a better life”.
Defendants claim they are also migrants
According to prosecutors, those on trial helped launch a vessel that was uncertified, poorly built, overcrowded, and lacking sufficient life jackets — unfit for any open-water voyage.
Investigators argue that responsibility also falls on those who transported, sheltered, or escorted the victims beforehand, framing these actions as links in a “chain of successive events” culminating in the disaster.
The defendants have pushed back, denying involvement in smuggling. Some claim they themselves were simply migrants attempting the crossing.
Prosecutors have been handed phone data and location records that investigators claim tie several of the defendants to the departure point and to coordinating Channel crossings — evidence that helped uncover two separate smuggling networks run by Afghans and Iraqis.
Additional sources • AFP