A court in England has sentenced a Romanian man to 18 months in jail for attempting to smuggle a Vietnamese teenager into the U.K., Sky News reported.
Andrei Iancu, 20, was convicted of hiding a 16-year-old Vietnamese boy in a suitcase in the boot of his car and illegally carrying him into the U.K.
Border security forces at Port of Dover in England arrested the Romanian man on May 31 while searching vehicles arriving in the U.K. from France.
The found the Vietnamese boy hidden in a suitcase in the car’s trunk. The boy, whose identity was not revealed, was in critical condition and rushed to a local hospital.
His health has improved after a month of treatment. Police said he was “extremely fortunate” to escape death.
Iancu, a college student, told police officers that he borrowed the car from his friend and was on his way to London to visit his girlfriend when he met the Vietnamese boy at a bus station in France and agreed to drive the boy to the U.K. at a negotiated price, according to the U.K. news channel Sky News.
The Romanian man used Google Translate to chat with the Vietnamese boy, who agreed to pay $233 for the transport.
The sentence was handed out on June 29.
Sky News cited a source from Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, as warning that migrant smuggling has become a fruitful business for criminals across Europe and that it showed no signs of abating.
The incident has rung alarm bells over the risks taken by desperate refugees, especially at a time when the migrant crisis continues to engulf large parts of Europe.