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Ibrahima Bah, an asylum seeker who steered a boat in the English Channel that resulted in the death of four passengers, has had his attempt to challenge his convictions and sentence dismissed. Bah was found guilty of manslaughter and of facilitating a breach of UK immigration law during his retrial at Canterbury Crown Court. He was sentenced to nine and a half years of detention in February after leading the dinghy in an attempted crossing in December 2022.
During the trial, Bah claimed that smugglers threatened to kill him if he did not drive the boat. However, the prosecution argued that he was not telling the truth. Jurors heard that the home-built dinghy should have carried no more than 20 people, but instead carried about 45 people in the English Channel that night. Bah’s lawyer described his trial as “touching on a highly politicised issue which gives rise to very strong feelings.”
In an attempt to bring his case to the Court of Appeal, Bah was denied the green light to challenge the ruling. Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr deemed it not “arguable”. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) opposed the appeal bid. Duncan Atkinson KC, representing the CPS, stated that “the passengers on the boat were acting in concert with their pilot.” He also said that “it was not the background or the scene setting, it was the continued act of facilitation at the time of their deaths which provided the circumstances in which the deaths occurred.”
Thirty-nine survivors were rescued by a UK fishing boat after coming across the sinking dinghy. They received help from the RNLI, air ambulance, and UK Border Force. Three of the deaths remain unknown, while the fourth person was identified as a 31-year-old man who had come from Afghanistan, Hajratullah Ahmadi
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