UK: DOVER: ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DEATHS LATEST
TAPE_NUMBER: EF00/0704
IN_TIME: 12:09:37 // 15:21:18 // 20:40:14
LENGTH: 01:48
SOURCES: BBC
RESTRICTIONS: No Access UK/CNN/Euro News/Fox/CNBC
FEED: VARIOUS (THE ABOVE TIME-CODE IS TIME-OF-DAY)
SCRIPT: Natural Sound
XFA
A Chinese man and woman were charged with conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants into the U-K on Saturday - following the discovery of fifty-eight bodies and 2 survivors in a lorry at Dover on Sunday night.
The latest arrests bring the total of those charged over the discovery to four.
On Friday, lorry driver Perry Wacker appeared in court and Arie van der Spek, the Dutch owner of the trucking company, was charged with illegal trafficking of aliens.
Friday also saw an inquest into the deaths.
A Chinese man and woman appeared briefly in court in Dover on Saturday, charged with conspiracy to smuggle in 58 Chinese, found dead in a lorry at Dover.
A second hearing is scheduled for June 30.
38-year old Chef You Yi and 29-year-old female interpreter Ying Guo, both from South Woodford in Essex, were arrested on Tuesday and questioned at a police station in Canterbury.
The Dutch driver of the lorry - which was carrying tomatoes from the Netherlands - appeared in court in Folkestone on Friday.
He was named as Perry Wacker, 32, of Rotterdam, Holland.
He was charged with manslaughter, as well as illegally bringing two people into Britain and illegally attempting to bring in the other 58.
He was remanded in custody until June 30.
And in the Netherlands, police brought the 24-year-old owner of the trucking company, identified earlier as Arie van der Spek, to court on Friday on charges of illegal trafficking of aliens.
Earlier on Friday, an inquest into the deaths heard an air vent on the side of the refrigeration container had been closed before the lorry went on to a ferry at Zeebrugge on Sunday, shutting off the air supply to the 56 young men and four young women.
Within five hours 58 of them were dead, but the first deaths probably occurred within an hour and a half of being sealed into the airtight container.
They died from a lack of oxygen and build up of carbon dioxide during the ferry crossing.
Coroner's officer Graham Perrin said the two survivors who were found unconscious by customs officers had an amazing escape, surviving because more air became available inside the container as the occupants died.
The immigrants had tried desperately to open the closed vent and the back doors, before banging fruitlessly on the walls of the container in a vain attempt to attract attention.
As carbon dioxide levels rose, they would have begun gasping for breath before going into respiratory arrest, after which death would have been mercifully quite rapid.
The illegal passengers had been concealed behind a false barrier made of wooden planks and by boxes of tomatoes - which the immigrants ate in an effort to avoid dehydration.
They were not allowed to carry luggage, so many had been wearing up to five layers of underwear, trousers and shirts, which they removed as temperatures inside the compartment soared.
The immigrants' bodies were subsequently discovered shortly before midnight by British customs officials during a routine search at Dover half an hour after it had disembarked from the ferry.
The two survivors are now recovering in a police safe house.
Most of the victims of this tragedy apparently came from China's southern Fujian province, notorious for gangs responsible for the human trafficking.
The case has sparked international condemnation of the criminal gangs who profit by smuggling people from Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa into the West amid promises of a better life.
A solicitor in contact with seven families who believe their relatives were among the dead has given police the possible identities of three of the dead.
But Wah-Piow Tan warned there would be little progress in identifying the others without an amnesty for British-based relatives, who feared deportation.
He called for the Home Secretary Jack Straw to grant the relatives of the dead exceptional leave to remain in England on compassionate grounds, so that they can identify the bodies.
But U-K Immigration Minister Barbara Roche said it wasn't her department's policy to grant general amnesties.
SHOTLIST: Dover, UK - 24 June 2000
1. Police van approaching magistrates' court containing Chef You Yi and Ying Guo (man and woman charged with conspiracy to smuggle immigrants) and entering magistrates court
2. Various of solicitors talking outside the magistrates court
3. Exteriors of magistrates court - close up on sign and pull out
4. Solicitors entering magistrates court?