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An asylum seeker found guilty of murdering the four migrants who died in a boat he piloted over English Channel lost his bid to challenge his convictions and sentence.
Ibrahima Bah was convicted manslaughter and sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison after dying in the sinking of the “unfit” ship he was piloting between France and the United Kingdom on December 14, 2022.
During a retrial at Canterbury Crown Court, Bah said the smugglers threatened to kill him if he did not steer the boat, but the prosecution said he was not telling the truth and owed his companions a “duty of care” as their pilot.
A Senegalese national, believed to be in his 20s, was also convicted of facilitating illegal entry into the UK.
At a hearing earlier this month, Bah took his case to the Court of Appeal in an attempt to get the green light to challenge his convictions and sentence.
In Wednesday’s ruling, Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr said Bah could not appeal, concluding it was not “arguable”.
Jurors heard that the home-made, shoddy dinghy was supposed to carry a maximum of 20 people, but that night it was carrying around 45 people in the English Channel.
Richard Thomas KC, for Bach, previously described his trial as “touching on a very politicized issue which stirs up very strong feelings”.
Mr Thomas told the Court of Appeal in London that it was a “joint venture” to travel to the UK and that Bach’s actions “meant that a passage to the UK was available so tragically that the deceased took advantage of that passage”.
The lawyer continued: “To use the passage, which they did knowing the risks involved, is precisely an autonomous choice that interrupts the causal flow.”
Sitting with Mr Justice Dove and Mr Justice Murray, Baroness Carr rejected this argument.
She said in her ruling: “The judge correctly analyzed that the fact that the deceased voluntarily joined the boat cannot establish a break in the chain of causation; evidence to that effect was therefore irrelevant to causation.”
Baroness Carr also concluded that the trial judge had given the correct instructions to the jury, adding: “An instruction to the jury asking them to consider whether the fact that the deceased had voluntarily boarded the boat would have broken the chain of causation in the wrong direction.”
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) opposed the appeal.
Duncan Atkinson KC, for the CPS, previously said: “This is a case where the passengers on board were acting in concert with their pilot.”
The barrister continued: “It was not a background or a scene … it was a continuing act of aiding and abetting at the time of their death which provided the circumstances in which death occurred.”
A total of 39 survivors were brought ashore in the port of Dover after the crew of a British fishing boat came across the sinking dinghy with the help of the RNLI, air ambulance and UK Border Force.
The three people who died were known only as unidentified men, while the other man was identified as Hajratullah Ahmadi, a 31-year-old married man who came from Afghanistan and had a six-year-old daughter at the time of his birth. death.