Fourteen men have gone on trial in Paris over the deaths of at least 27 confirmed dead and up to 31 people in the worst mass drowning from a small-boat crossing in the English Channel on record.
The defendants, described as mainly Afghan nationals and alleged members of people-smuggling networks, face charges including involuntary manslaughter, facilitating illegal immigration as part of an organised criminal gang, and criminal conspiracy.
The boat left the northern French coast on the evening of 23 November 2021 and ran into difficulty in the middle of the Channel. According to testimony from the two survivors, the inflatable dinghy began to deflate and take on water after several hours at sea. Passengers fell overboard and drowned one after another.
Despite making around a dozen desperate calls for help to French and British rescue services, it was nearly 12 hours after the first distress calls before the dinghy was found by a French fishing vessel near British waters off Calais. Only two men survived.
Twenty-seven bodies were recovered after the boat sank. Four people remain unaccounted for. The victims were mostly Iraqi Kurds but also included people from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iran, Somalia, Vietnam and Egypt. The youngest known victim was a seven-year-old girl. The confirmed dead also included 15 men, seven women and two teenagers.
Prosecutors have accused the defendants of helping launch what the charge sheet describes as a "substandard small boat, uncertified, unfit for navigation on the open sea, overcrowded and lacking appropriate lifejackets."
Among the defendants are alleged organisers, transporters and logistics coordinators connected to smuggling groups operating from camps near Grande-Synthe and Calais in northern France. Prosecutors argue their actions helped create the conditions that led to the disaster, even if some were not physically present when the boat launched. Liability has also been extended to those accused of transporting, housing or accompanying the victims, actions that investigators describe as forming part of a "chain of successive events" leading to the tragedy.
Most of the defendants have denied being smugglers and disputed their responsibility, or have presented themselves as people who were seeking to make the crossing themselves. However, phone records and location tracking placed several of them near the departure site and linked them to organising crossings to Britain.
Two of the 14 defendants, including one Afghan man alleged to be a leader of the operation, are the subject of arrest warrants and are being tried in absentia.
A relative of one of the victims travelled from Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan to address the court. Zana Mamand Mohammed's younger brother Twana was 18 when he drowned. His body has never been found.
"We've been waiting for justice for five years," Mohammed told the court. "We've been waiting for our brother's body for five years. I live with the uncertainty of ever finding out what happened. We lost a member of our family. He had a project for another future to live, but unfortunately it ended with a lifeless body."
Twana had wanted to find a job, develop his sporting success as a black belt in taekwondo, and escape the violence and insecurity of his region. His family had tried to dissuade him from leaving home.
A separate investigation is ongoing in France into seven French military personnel, including five members of a maritime rescue coordination centre and two sailors aboard a patrol vessel, who have been under investigation since 2023 for allegedly failing to help people in danger. They deny the allegations.
In the United Kingdom, an independent inquiry released its report in February and found that systemic failings, missed opportunities and inadequate resourcing undermined the UK's maritime search and rescue response on the night of the disaster. HM Coastguard was placed in an "intolerable position," the report said, with chronic staff shortages and limited operational capacity contributing directly to the failure to rescue those on board.
