Fresh UK arrests over 39 dead found in truck

British police investigating the discovery of 39 bodies in a truck said yesterday they had arrested two people on suspicion of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people. Eight women and 31 men, believed to be Chinese nationals, were found in the refrigerated trailer on Wednesday, in a case that has shocked Britain.

After detaining a 25-year-old truck driver from Northern Ireland at the scene on suspicion of murder, Essex police confirmed two additional arrests on Friday. A man and a woman, both aged 38 and from Warrington in Cheshire, northwest England, “have been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to traffic people and on suspicion of 39 counts of manslaughter”, the force said. The first autopsies were to take place Friday as investigators attempt to establish how they died before the work begins on trying to identify the victims.

Ambulances had been called to a parked-up truck in an industrial zone in Grays, east of London, early Wednesday but all the victims inside were already dead. The refrigerated trailer had arrived at nearby Purfleet on the River Thames estuary on a ferry from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge just over an hour before ambulance crews called the police at 1:40 am. The truck which collected the trailer had left the port 35 minutes before that call.

Questions have been raised about when the victims entered the refrigerated trailer, where temperatures can be as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit). The crossing to Purfleet from Zeebrugge, one of the world’s busiest ports for cargo on trucks, takes nine to 12 hours. Belgian investigators were working to establish where the trailer came from before reaching the port. “We have ways to reconstruct the route of the container but it’s not instantaneous, it can take time,” Eric Van Duyse, spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office, said.