An asylum seeker convicted of manslaughter after four migrants died as he steered a boat across the English Channel has made a bid to bring a challenge against his convictions and sentence at the Court of Appeal.
Ibrahima Bah was sentenced to nine and a half years’ detention after the deaths as he piloted the “unseaworthy” boat between France and the UK on December 14 2022.
During a retrial at Canterbury Crown Court, Bah said smugglers threatened to kill him if he did not drive the boat but the prosecution said he was not telling the truth and he owed his fellow passengers a “duty of care” as their pilot.
The Senegalese national was also convicted of facilitating illegal entry to the UK.
At a hearing on Wednesday, Bah brought his case to the Court of Appeal in a bid for the green light to challenge his convictions and sentence.
His barrister Richard Thomas KC said the conviction could be challenged on several grounds including over an allegation of “jury irregularity” after a report was made about a juror talking to colleagues about the trial, though no action was taken by the Attorney General.
He later told the hearing in London: “This was, as the jury were told at the beginning of the trial, a trial touching on a highly politicised issue which gives rise to very strong feelings.”
Bah’s trial was told 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.
Mr Thomas said: “This was a joint endeavour to travel to the UK to claim asylum.”
He added 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.”
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.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is opposing the appeal bid.
Duncan Atkinson KC, for the CPS, 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.”
At the end of the hearing the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, sitting with Mr Justice Dove and Mr Justice Murray, said the decision would be given in writing at a later date.
