A man who piloted a small boat across the Channel on a crossing during which at least four fellow passengers drowned has been found guilty of manslaughter.
Ibrahima Bah was convicted by a jury at Canterbury crown court on Monday after a retrial. The court had heard Bah’s claim to have piloted the boat under duress from a people-smuggling gang.
Bah, who is Senegalese, was one of more than 40 people trying to cross to the UK in the improvised vessel on 14 December 2022, and received free passage in return for steering it, prosecutors alleged.
During the trial, jurors were told the home-built, “unseaworthy” inflatable should have had no more than 20 people onboard, but at least 43 people were loaded into it.
The defendant told jurors he had agreed to pilot the boat before he had seen it, in exchange for free travel for himself and his friend. But he said he had changed his mind when he saw the inflatable on the beach because it was too small for the number of passengers.
He said he had been given no choice by the people smugglers, believing they would kill him if he refused. Bah told the jury that, when he tried to back out, he was assaulted.
“Once we got there and I saw that boat had been assembled, and I then saw the number of people who were going to be travelling, that’s when I said: ‘No I’m not doing it.’ When I said I’m not doing it, I was beaten up and they showed me that if I didn’t pilot the boat they were going to beat me up and kill me,” he told the court.
And one of the passengers gave evidence that, were it not for Bah, “we would have all died”.
But prosecutors alleged that Bah owed his fellow passengers a duty of care, having agreed to pilot the craft. They said he was therefore responsible for the deaths of the four people known to have drowned when the vessel broke up. The prosecutor, Duncan Atkinson KC, said Bah was not telling the truth about being forced to pilot it, and that he was changing his story as to why he did not want to drive the vessel.
Bah was found guilty by the jury of four counts of manslaughter, by a majority of 10 to two. He was also found guilty unanimously of facilitating illegal entry to the UK.
Atkinson had told jurors that, while Bah had claimed to have experience handling fishing vessels in Senegal, he was not trained or licensed to lead the voyage and there was insufficient safety equipment such as life jackets and no flares or radio onboard.
“He, as the pilot, owed to the passengers of that small and vulnerable boat for their safety during the crossing that he had agreed to make. He was aware that the boat was overcrowded, lacking in safety equipment and, as it took in water, that it was increasingly unseaworthy.”
The jury heard that a UK fishing boat came across the inflatable and tried to rescue the passengers, with help from the RNLI, air ambulance and UK Border Force. A total of 39 survivors were brought to shore in the port of Dover.
The exact number of people who drowned is unknown as it appears at least one person’s body was not recovered, Atkinson said. Three of the people who died were known only as unknown male persons, while one man was named as Hajratullah Ahmadi.
Bah is due to be sentenced at Canterbury crown court on Friday 23 February.
