In a Paris courtroom, fourteen people now face judgment for their alleged role in the night a dinghy deflated in the middle of the English Channel, taking at least thirty lives — among them a seven-year-old child — into the cold water. The November 2021 disaster, the deadliest small-boat crossing the Channel has ever recorded, was not merely a tragedy of the sea but, prosecutors argue, the foreseeable consequence of deliberate choices made for profit. This trial asks the law to draw a line of culpability through a web of desperation, organised crime, and institutional failure that stretches ac
14 smugglers on trial for deadliest Channel crossing disaster that killed 30
At least 30 men, women and children drowned, including a seven-year-old, with victims from Iraq, Somalia, Ethiopia, Egypt and Afghanistan; only two survived.