People trafficker says lorry deaths of 39 migrants was just ‘luck of the draw’

A people trafficker who places migrants inside lorries in Belgium described the 39 people found dead in a shipping container as ‘the luck of the draw’.

Kastrijot Ahmati, a UK-based Albanian using the pseudonym ‘Kace Kace’, advertised his services through a Facebook page called ‘Albanians in London’, the Mail on Sunday reports.

He was approached by an undercover reporter who told him she wanted to leave Albania for London this week.

Mr Ahmati reportedly told her she would have to pay £17,000 for ‘fake papers’ if she wanted to fly from Tirana, the country’s capital, or said she could travel inside a lorry from Belgium.

This would cost her £14,000, but the journalist was told she would be moved along with other migrants, as it was the only way for the smugglers to make a ‘profit’.

The Mail claims that Mr Ahmati said he had reached the UK in the back of a lorry himself, adding that he was trying to find the ‘easiest’ way for her to travel.

When she expressed fears about the 39 people who were found dead inside a shipping container on Wednesday, he said: ‘It is the luck of the draw. That is how we all came.’

The journalist then said ‘we will die’, to which Mr Ahmati, from the northern region of Has, reportedly laughed at.

His Facebook account was taken down shortly after he was contacted for comment.

Last year, the National Crime Agency (NCA) revealed that Albanian gangs operating at the ‘higher end of sophistication’ were being linked to a rise in trafficking victims arriving in the UK.

Figures showed a 35 per cent increase in the number of people being trafficked, with the majority from Albania.

This weekend Essex Police confirmed they had charged the driver of the lorry that contained the bodies of 39 dead migrants.

Maurice Robinson, 25, known as ‘Mo’, was charged with 39 counts of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people over the lorry trailer deaths, officers said.

He is also facing charges of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and money laundering, and will appear at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court tomorrow.

Robinson, from Northern Ireland, was arrested shortly after the bodies of eight women and 31 men were found in the refrigerated trailer, in an industrial park in Grays.

On Saturday, a second lorry driver in his 20s was arrested at Dublin port, while a couple from Warrington, Cheshire, were detained on Friday.

A 48-year-old man from Northern Ireland was also taken into custody on Friday at Stansted Airport on suspicion of conspiracy to traffic people and manslaughter.

In Belgium, police have been hunting the driver who delivered the trailer to Zeebrugge, the port it left before arriving in the UK.

Police initially thought the victims were Chinese nationals, but it has since been discovered that as many as 25 are Vietnamese, and came from the impoverished region of Yen Than.

It has now been claimed that the refrigerated trailer in which they died may have been part of a larger convey of three lorries, carrying up to 100 people.

The other lorry trailers are believed to have made it safely to the UK.

Families who suspect their loved ones are among the 39 victims are said to be anxiously waiting for news from the authorities.

Pham Van Thin and his wife Nguyen Thi Phong said they had scraped together £30,000 to send their daughter Pham Tra My, 26, to the UK.

On Tuesday night, hours before the lorry was found, she sent a distressed message to her parents which read: ‘I’m sorry mum, my path to abroad didn’t succeed.

‘I love you and Dad so much! I’m dying because I can’t breathe.’

Hoang Thi Thuong, from Nghe An province, has also expressed fears her husband Nguyen Dinh Tu was also in the shipping container.

He had been working illegally in Romania and Germany, and paid smugglers £11,000 to get to the UK.

Ms Hoang has not heard from him since October 21, and has been told by relatives that he was in the Essex truck.