Channel migrant deaths: Boat pilot beaten and threatened, jury told

Ibrahima Bah said he was forced by people traffickers to pilot the boat

A teenager accused of killing four migrants while crossing the Channel has told his trial he was beaten and threatened by people smugglers.

Ibrahima Bah, 19, from Senegal, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of manslaughter.

At least four people drowned when the inflatable boat he was said to be piloting deflated in December 2022.

Bah told Canterbury Crown Court he was recruited after helping steer a boat from Africa to Europe.

Through an interpreter, he told the jury it had been his dream to leave Senegal and come to the United Kingdom.

He admitted he did not realise the UK was an island and that he would have to cross the English Channel to get there.

He had already been in a wooden boat to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy, when he said occasionally he had taken over steering when the pilot was getting tired.

He said when he was in the migrant camp in France people had seen a video of him piloting that wooden boat and told him he could go to the UK for free as long as he piloted a boat.

He said he had run out of money by then so he knew it was the only way he could get across.

Lifeboats and a nearby fishing boat helped with the rescue

He described being taken in a van with other asylum seekers to the beach, where he saw a boat being inflated and a number of people waiting to get into it.

That was when he said he changed his mind about the crossing, but people smugglers told him he would still be going across, beating him and telling him if he came back to shore they would kill him, the jury was told.

"One of them said we brought you all the way and you're telling us you're not going because the boat is too small," he told the court.

He said he was beaten until he was dizzy, there was "no one I could call to help, I couldn't run away" and that he had to comply.

Four people died during the crossing

Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC put it to Bah that he had been heard saying "I'll get you there or kill you all".

Bah replied: "I swear on the Koran that didn't come out of my mouth."

He added: "Honestly I wanted to come to this this country but I never wanted to come here with dead bodies."

The trial continues.

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