Irish Launch Probe of Dead Refugees in Container

23/05/2001| IslamWeb

WEXFORD, Ireland (Reuters) - Ireland launched a massive investigation on Saturday after eight refugees, including two children, were found dead in a shipping container.
``We certainly will do all in our power, with the help of our colleagues, to bring those people that are responsible for trafficking to justice,'' police Superintendent John Farrelly told a news conference.
Ireland was shocked and its leaders were galvanized into action after the grim discovery earlier in the day of the bodies of eight people, six of them men and two male children, in a container of office furniture shipped to Ireland from Belgium.
Five other people, including two women, were found alive inside the same container and were taken to hospital, where their condition was said to be serious.
The grim discovery immediately drew comparison to the deaths of 58 Chinese refugees who were found suffocated to death in a truck in Dover, England in June 2000.
Farrelly at first said the would-be refugees may have come from Romania, but he later said that one survivor, a 17-year-old male, ``may be Turkish'' and that police hoped to question him.
As he spoke, the state pathologist's office was completing the task of removing the bodies of the dead from the container, pending a forensic examination.
A fleet of hearses drove the bodies of the victims, who had hoped to begin a better life in prosperous Ireland, away from the southern Irish office park.