Dutch Police Seize Suspect in Migrant Deaths

Police arrested a second suspect in the deaths of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants, and a Chinese refugee came forward Tuesday to say his cousin called repeatedly during a four-month odyssey from China through Russia and into Western Europe and was almost certainly among the dead.

The immigrants were found dead late Sunday at the British port of Dover, apparently suffocated in the back of an unventilated truck on the disastrous final leg of their trip.

The Dutch driver of the truck was detained in Dover and held on suspicion of manslaughter, and on Tuesday, Dutch authorities announced the second arrest. They said they captured the suspect during a raid on three houses in the Dutch port of Rotterdam on Monday.

Police did not release the suspect’s name and refused to say if the suspect was a man they had been pursuing--Dutch engineer Arie Van der Spek, 24, who owned the company that leased the truck. Police said earlier that Van der Spek registered the company, Van der Spek Transporten, on June 15. He vanished before police showed up Monday at his apartment.

In Dover, Dutch and British police interrogated the truck driver who brought the young immigrants, most in their 20s, on the last leg of their trip from southern China’s Fujian province. And in Canterbury, the only two survivors remained under police guard Tuesday, traumatized by their futile struggle to escape the truck.

Quoting unidentified hospital sources, reports in London newspapers said the two men told an interpreter how they banged on the truck’s walls and shouted, their desperation mounting as their companions began to pass out and die.

The survivors are key to tracing the smugglers who organized the hellish journey across the English Channel from Belgium: The immigrants were packed in among tomatoes, and the truck’s refrigeration unit was turned off as temperatures outside reached the high 80s, the hottest day of the year so far.

Police hoped that the two men would soon be fit for questioning.

Meanwhile, a Chinese immigrant said he was sure that his cousin, Chen Lin, 19, was among the dead.

Yang Chen, who slipped into Britain in January and has applied for political asylum, said his cousin’s parents had borrowed $21,000 for the trip. Chen left the city of Changle in Fujian province in February, Yang told the British news agency, Press Assn.

Chen phoned home regularly during the journey through China and Russia, on foot through the mountains of the Czech Republic and then to the Netherlands, Yang said. He said his cousin was accompanied along the way by armed smugglers.

“The last call was from Holland on Sunday, and they said they were traveling to the United Kingdom that night. . . . They have not heard from him since,” said Yang, 20.