Third Dutchman Held in Deaths of Stowaway Chinese Migrants
Dutch police on Wednesday arrested the owner of a trucking firm that carried 58 illegal Chinese immigrants to their deaths in an unventilated truck. An attorney said the vehicle was so full that eight other stowaways were turned away.
Arie van der Spek, 24, surrendered to police in the Dutch port of Rotterdam on Tuesday night, the third person in custody in the suffocation deaths of the immigrants, who were found Sunday by inspectors in the British port of Dover. Two immigrants survived.
Belgian and British police began checking fingerprints of a group of Chinese migrants who were detained in April at two Belgian villages. The migrants fit the description of those found Sunday.
A 55-year-old Dutchman also is under arrest in the Netherlands, and police are interrogating the truck’s Dutch driver, 33, who Dutch media said is his son.
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