Police fear manslaughter accused may have fled

ONE of the men accused of the manslaughter of eight refugees found in a container in Wexford was missing on the final day of his trial in Belgium yesterday.

Flamour Domi, 45, described as the Belgian chief executive of the trafficking gang, was on bail and did not appear in court in Bruges. His lawyer said he had a heart condition and would be present for the verdict and possible sentencing on March 25.

However, police investigating the gang said they feared he had absconded. Two of the eight charged have never been caught by police and they are being tried in their absence. A Turk who organised the multi-million euro trafficking business from his home in London, Ozgur Doganbaloglu, 42, is believed to have fled to the US. His main accomplice in Belgium, Zogaj Bekim, 22, an Albanian Kosovan asylum seeker, is also missing and believed to be hiding in Britain. One of the accused, Donald Domi, 20, admitted to the court yesterday that he had worked for Mr Bekim, but said it was only in a very small way.

The court heard on Wednesday that he had spent thousands of euro on mobile phone calls helping to arrange the illegal transport of at least 2,400 people through Belgium in a year.

However, he told the court yesterday that he received free phone cards from Mr Bekim for the few months he spent working for him. The chief prosecutor, Freddy Van Damme, rejected this and defended the evidence compiled by the police mainly from tracing mobile phone calls made by the gang. Lawyers for the three taxi drivers also charged told the court they did not know they were involved in people trafficking. As far as they were concerned they were simply picking up people and driving them to the lorry park on the outskirts of Brussels. The three are Mohamed Kebdani, 31, and Enver Berisha, 48, who are Albanian Kosovan asylum seekers in Brussels, and Moroccan national Abdeslam Tribak, 37.

The Belgian truck driver, Johan Schrower, 50, denied he knew the 13 refugees were in his lorry when he drove it from Brussels to the port of Zeebruge in December 4, 2001. But the prosecutor said that even if this was true, he had a legal duty to take control of his vehicle. Had he done this, he would have checked the seal on the container and seen that it had been interfered with and he would have discovered those inside and saved their lives. The eight were all Turkish and included a mother and her two sons and a father and his two children died. They were suffocated. They spent over 101 hours in the almost sealed container. Several were close to death or were dead before the container left Zeebrugge.