This is a terrible story for many reasons - it's about people trafficking. Click here to read. Four men were sentenced at Truro Crown Court today for smuggling 29 Vietnamese people, including 17 children, into the UK on a delapidated yacht in April 2019. They sailed across the Channel to Newlyn from Roscoff in Brittany, and loaded the Vietnames into a windowless van.
They then drove off up through Cornwall.
Several people had noticed the Vietnamese people coming off the yacht in Newlyn and phoned the police, who tracked the van and stopped it at Cullompton service station.
The men were arrested. One of the Vietnamese has been deported. All the rest - including the children who were taken into care - have disappeared after not answering bail.
The judge said prison was the only option for the men:
"In the van, being carted around like freight were 29 living, breathing and desperate human beings, for whose plight you cared not one jot."
