Asylum seeker boat pilot loses bid to challenge convictions over migrant deaths

An asylum seeker convicted of manslaughter after four migrants died while he steered them across the Channel in a ‘death trap’ dinghy has lost a bid to challenge his convictions and sentence.

Ibrahima Bah was jailed for nine and a half years over the deaths as he piloted the ‘wholly inadequate and not remotely seaworthy’ vessel between France and the UK on December 14, 2022.

During a retrial at Canterbury Crown Court, he claimed smugglers threatened to kill him if he did not drive the boat, but prosecutors said he was lying and he owed his fellow passengers a ‘duty of care’ as their pilot.

The Senegalese national, thought to be 20 years old, was also convicted of facilitating illegal entry to the UK.

Sentencing Bah earlier this year, judge Mr Justice Johnson said: ‘The boat was wholly inadequate, and not remotely seaworthy for a Channel crossing.

‘It was a death trap, just as every boat of its type which sets off across the Channel in similar circumstances is a death trap – the fact that in many cases fatalities do not occur is not remotely reassuring.

‘What happened is an utter tragedy for those who died and for their families.’

At a hearing earlier this month, Bah brought his case to the Court of Appeal in a bid for the green light to challenge his convictions and sentence.

In a ruling on Wednesday, the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr said Bah could not bring the appeal, ruling it was not ‘arguable’.

Jurors heard that the home-built, low-quality inflatable should have had no more than 20 people on board but carried about 45 people in the English Channel that night.

In his sentencing remarks, the trial judge said: ‘It was made of substandard and insufficiently robust material – it had no rigid hull, no seating, no sufficiently powerful engine, no lights, no navigation equipment, no charts, no compass, no (radio), no emergency equipment, no flares, no fire extinguisher, no first aid kits, no food and water, no paddles, no toolkits, no life raft, no waterproofs, no life jackets, and an insufficient number of buoyancy aids, which were not manufactured to any recognised standard.

‘It was grossly overcrowded (and) you were travelling across the busiest shipping lane in the world, on a cold winter’s night.’

Richard Thomas KC, for Bah, previously described his trial as ‘touching on a highly politicised issue which gives rise to very strong feelings’.

Mr Thomas told the Court of Appeal in London that it had been a ‘joint endeavour’ to travel to the UK, and that Bah’s actions ‘meant that a passage to the UK was available so tragically the deceased availed themselves of that passage’.

The barrister continued: ‘The availing themselves of the passage, which they did so knowing the risks involved, is precisely the autonomous choice that breaks the train of causation.’

Sitting with Mr Justice Dove and Mr Justice Murray, Baroness Carr dismissed this argument.

She said in her ruling: ‘The judge correctly analysed that the fact that the deceased volunteered to join the boat could not establish a break in the chain of causation; the evidence to that effect was thus irrelevant to causation.’

Baroness Carr also ruled that the trial judge gave the right directions to the jury, adding: ‘An instruction to the jury inviting them to consider whether the fact that the deceased boarded the boat of their own free will broke the chain of causation would have amounted to a misdirection.’

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had opposed the appeal bid.

Duncan Atkinson KC, for the CPS, previously said: ‘This is a case where the passengers on the boat were acting in concert with their pilot.’

The barrister continued: ‘It was not the background or the scene setting… it was the continued act of facilitation at the time of their deaths which provided the circumstances in which the deaths occurred.’

A total of 39 survivors were brought to shore in the port of Dover after a UK fishing boat crew came across the sinking dinghy with help from the RNLI, air ambulance and UK Border Force.

Three of the people who died were known only as unknown male persons while the other man was named as Hajratullah Ahmadi, a 31-year-old married man who had come from Afghanistan and had a six-year-old daughter at the time of his death.

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