WERE THERE MORE?
Essex lorry chiller packed with 39 dead Chinese migrants crossed English Channel TWICE in week before disaster
A FROZEN lorry packed with 39 dead Chinese migrants crossed the Channel twice before arriving in Essex - sparking fears more people were smuggled.
Tracking data has revealed the container visited migrant hotspots Calais and Dunkirk in the week leading up to the tragedy.
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The grisly discovery is one of Britain's biggest-ever mass murder probes after the bodies were found on an industrial estate in Grays on Wednesday.
Lorry driver Maurice 'Mo' Robinson, 25, is still being quizzed on suspicion of murder after he picked up the trailer from Purfleet in Essex.
There are now fears more migrants may have been smuggled through Europe in the days leading up to the horror, The Times reveals.
Robinson is not believed to be linked to these claims.
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New data has shown the GPS tracker on the trailer was switched on at 3.06pm on October 15 after travelling from Dublin to Monaghan, near the border with Northern Ireland.
It then stopped at Warwickshire and Kent before crossing the Channel to Belgium, and making its way on to Calais and Dunkirk.
From here, it went back to the UK via Belgium and then repeated the journey before the victims made the perilous 173-mile journey in the refrigerated container to Purfleet.
The container's movements will heighten fears ruthless "Snakehead" Chinese gangs are using ports in Europe to smuggle migrants into the UK.
WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR:
- 39 adults found dead on truck in Grays, Essex, believed to have frozen to death
- Police confirm the victims are Chinese nationals including eight women
- Lorry trailer registered in Varna, Bulgaria, and travelled into Purfleet, Essex, from Zeebrugge, in Belgium
- Driver Maurice 'Mo' Robinson, 25, from Northern Ireland arrested on suspicion of murder
- 'Snakehead' Chinese gangs are suspected of masterminding the migrant-smuggling plot
- Cops are also said to be investigating a criminal gang with links to Irish dissident paramilitaries
Robinson meanwhile was in the lorry's cab, which travelled from Holyhead on Saturday, and picked up the container at 12.30am.
Both lorry and trailer then left the port at 1.05am. Less than 35 minutes later ambulance and police made the grim discovery of the 39 bodies in the back.
Dad-to-be Robinson, from Northern Ireland, is said to have opened the container to get some paperwork and passed out when he made the grim discovery.
A pal said: "When he opened the container up and saw all the dead bodies, he was absolutely horrified - as anyone would be - and called the ambulance service who in turn alerted the police.
"I heard the container was refrigerated - the temperature was -25 degrees and the bodies were frozen and had been dead for some time."
The Federal Public Prosecutor’s office in Belgium believe the container arrived in Zeebrugge on October 22 at 2.49pm before embarking on its fateful journey.
DEAD FOR 12 HOURS
It has been reported the migrants had been dead for at least 12 hours before reaching the UK.
Essex Police have reported all the 39 victims - including a teenager - are from China. They said eight of the victims were women and the remaining 31 men.
Cops have described one of the women as a "young adult" but no other indication of the age of the victims has been released.
Bodies are now being moved by private ambulance with a police escort from Tilbury Docks to Broomfield Hospital so post-mortem examinations can be carried out.
PORT WARNING
The horror has chilling echoes of 2000, when 58 Chinese stowaways died in a lorry travelling by ferry from Belgium to Britain.
In both tragedies, the victims had come from Zeebrugge in to Purfleet port in Essex.
Cops warned the government three years ago that people smugglers were targeting Purfleet as it was "less busy" than other ports.
Smuggling operations are so regular at the port, there is a "migrant minibus service" to take migrants away, reports.
Global Trailer Rentals Ltd (GTR) have confirmed to RTE News they own the container and that they leased it on October 15 from their yard in Co Monaghan for £238.22 a week.
FROZEN TO DEATH
Police swooped on three homes in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, related to Robinson, who brands the lorry "The Polar Express" on social media.
Last night, police began the grim task of removing the bodies from the lorry, with 11 victims taken by private ambulance from the Port of Tilbury to Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford.
Sources close to Irish police said the lorry’s refrigeration unit - which could have plunged temperatures as low as -25C - was turned on, leaving those inside with "no chance of survival".
Even if the trailer was not chilled the victims may have suffered agonising deaths as oxygen slowly ran out.
The Mayor of Zeebrugge, Dirk De Fauw, insist the migrants were dead before they arrived at Zeebrugge, or they would have been detected by heat cameras.
He added: "If you end up in such a box with 39 people, you're going to die."
Bulgarian TV last night named the wife of a haulage boss in the north of England as an owner of the lorry involved in the tragedy, Mail Online reported.
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Joanna Maher, 38, from Warrington, was named as the owner of the Scania truck, which was registered in the Bulgarian port of Varna in 2018.
But Mrs Maher and her husband Thomas said they sold the cab a year ago to a company in Ireland.
Their home in Warrington, Cheshire, was today visited by police.
Robinson, who has been a HGV driver for more than five years, doesn't own the lorry.
Varna is notorious for cigarette and fuel smuggling and has known links to Irish Republican gangs.
Detectives from the National Crime Agency are now investigating whether an Irish people smuggling gang with links to Bulgaria was behind the horror.
They are focusing on three men who are suspected of being part of a South Armagh criminal gang with links to dissident paramilitaries, The Daily Telegraph reports.
There are also fears the ruthless Chinese "Snakehead" gangs could have masterminded the smuggling plot.
CHINESE SNAKEHEAD GANG LINKS
RUTHLESS Chinese “Snakehead” gangs masterminded the people smuggling plot which sparked the Essex lorry horror, it was believed last night.
Trafficking gangs founded in the eastern province of Fujian make millions ferrying migrant “slaves” and prostitutes from East to West.
Their profits have rocketed in recent years fuelled by the desperation of peasants prepared to risk their lives to flee the poverty of China’s rural hinterlands.
Investigators say Chinese families of migrants dreaming of a new life in the West pay tens of thousands of pounds for their loved ones’ “safe” passage to the UK.
Gangs promise their human cargo will be gifted well paid jobs in Britain as waitresses or office clerks.
But thousands of women who fall into the Snakehead’s clutches end up as prisoners in brothels - or enslaved in nail bars and underground cannabis factories.
And their families back home never learn of their plight, but are held responsible for their travel costs and continue to pay the gangs for years.
Meanwhile, police are also reportedly focusing their investigation on three suspected Irish gang members they believe may have been involved in the smuggling operation which led to the death of the 39 migrants.
Detectives are investigating the men, who are suspected of being part of a South Armagh criminal gang with links to dissident paramilitaries, The Daily Telegraph reports.
One man has links to a Bulgarian company that owned the lorry cab which transported the refrigerated trailer the migrants' bodies were found in from the port of Purfleet, the paper claims.
Police were last night attempting to piece together the route taken by the 39 doomed Chinese victims.
Cops are investigating whether they were passed between different gangs at borders in Central Asia and Europe before attempting the channel crossing.
Other tragedies have been linked to Snakehead traffickers.
In June 2000, 58 bodies — 54 men and four women — were found in a refrigerated container lorry in Dover, hidden under boxes of tomatoes and a false wooden screen.
PREVIOUS TRAGEDIES
All but two of 60 Chinese migrants loaded into the sealed truck in Holland suffocated in agony after entering the UK - like the recent victims - through Zeebrugge.
An inquest was told how the dying victims banged on the side of the container with their shoes as they ran out of air.
Dutch truck driver Perry Wacker - who closed a vent as he left the Belgian port to avoid suspicion - was jailed for 14 years for his part in the horror but Chinese masterminds cheated justice.
And in 2004, 23 Chinese cockle pickers who were searching for a "better life" drowned in Morecambe Bay, Lancs, when they were trapped by sweeping tides.
MOST READ IN NEWS
Mike Gradwell, a former Lancashire Police detective superintendent who worked on the probe into the tragedy said today the Snakehead gang could have been behind the Essex horror.
He said: "These are criminal travel agents really - you go to a Snakehead to say you want to be trafficked to an economic opportunity and usually you'll borrow quite a significant amount of money."
Anyone concerned about relatives following the incident can call a Casualty Bureau on 0800 056 0944 or 0207 158 0010 if ringing from outside the UK.
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