LONDON: A British court on Friday handed a van driver a 10-year prison term for smuggling migrants in a secret compartment where they were found screaming for help as they were starved of oxygen.

Anas al-Mustafa, 43, originally from Syria, was found guilty in August of assisting unlawful migration by trafficking the seven people in a specially adapted van.

The six men and one woman were found crammed into the overheated concealed space described no more than "the width of a human chest".

They were discovered last February when crew members on a ship between Dieppe in northern France and Newhaven on England's south coast heard pleas from inside the van.

They used an axe to free the migrants by breaking down the fake partition.

By the time they were rescued two had lost consciousness. None of the migrants had been supplied with water, the court was told.

Prosecutors said that the younger migrants recovered from their dehydration but that one man had a possible heart attack, the woman suffered an acute kidney injury and another man went to hospital in a comatose state and suffered a stroke.

"Desperate people are prepared to risk their lives to come into the UK, often with tragic consequences," judge Christine Laing said.

"They are exploited by those who profit from this trade and pay little attention to their safety."

Border Security and Asylum Minister Angela Eagle said the case underlined the need to dismantle the smuggling gangs.

"This evil criminal put seven people's lives at risk for cash, it is a miracle they are still alive after the conditions they were put in," she said in a statement.

Immigration was a major issue at the general election in July that brought Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour party to power.

One of his first acts as prime minister was to abolish the last Conservative government's plan to deport migrants to Rwanda as a deterrent to Channel crossings from northern France in small boats.

Twelve people died off the northern French coast on Tuesday as they tried to make the journey, in the deadliest such disaster this year.

The Conservatives' former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, however, accused Labour of having "surrendered to the smuggling gangs".

"They got rid of the one credible deterrent, which was the Rwanda policy," he said.

  - AFP