Iran Press/ Europe: The Belgian officials said the eight women and 31 men would have been locked in the trailer at temperatures as low as -25C for at least 10 hours after the trailer arrived at the port of Zeebrugge on Tuesday afternoon.
As the investigation gathered pace, police secured an additional 24 hours to question a lorry driver arrested at the scene of the discovery, and inquiries broadened to involve the authorities in Ireland, Belgium, and China.
The Irish company that owns the trailer said it was cooperating with police and insisted it had no connection to the driver, 25-year-old Mo Robinson.
One report claimed detectives were focusing on three suspected gang members based in Northern Ireland near the border with the Irish Republic.
The news that the victims were Chinese, strengthened suspicions that it could be a case of human trafficking rather than economic migrants or refugees. Experts said the majority of Chinese people brought to the UK illegally found themselves in a situation of debt bondage when they reached the country.
New details of the journeys taken by the trailer and cab emerged, raising further questions about when and where the victims were locked inside the trailer and by whom.
The refrigerated trailer compartment arrived unaccompanied in the UK from Zeebrugge early on Wednesday morning and was collected at the port of Purfleet at 1.05 am by a lorry cab driven by Robinson, a self-employed hauler from Northern Ireland.
Police said Robinson’s burgundy cab arrived at Holyhead by ferry from Dublin on Sunday. The trailer had been leased five days earlier in County Monaghan, just south of the Irish border, a spokesman for Global Trailer Rentals (GTR), the operating company, confirmed.
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