Prosecutors target smuggled people who were forced to pilot small boats

Campaigners say Ibrahima Bah should be treated as a victim of trafficking after he was forced to pilot a boat. Instead he faces at least six years in prison

Ibrahima Bah will spend at least the next six years and three months in custody for manslaughter, after smuggling dozens of people into the UK on a small boat across the Channel during which at least four people died.

In the words of the migration minister Michael Tomlinson, it was “right that he has been brought to justice” because Bah “put dozens of lives in extreme danger by taking charge of a perilous and illegal small boat crossing”.