Seven men have received jail terms of between two and 10 years for their part in a human smuggling operation that led to the deaths of eight people in a container in Co Wexford in 2001.
A court in Bruges found the men guilty of manslaughter, human trafficking, membership of a criminal organisation and involuntary bodily harm.
But the Belgian driver who drove the container containing 13 illegal immigrants onto a ferry at Zeebrugge was acquitted after the panel of three judges found there was no evidence against him.
The Belgian authorities have confiscated more than €300,000 from the gang responsible for the operation.
The immigrants had spent more than 100 hours in the almost airless container by the time it was opened at Drinagh Business Park in Co Wexford on December 8th, 2001.
Three of those who received the toughest sentences were not in court yesterday and police have not yet apprehended Osgur Doganbaloglu and Bekim Zogaj, the gang's ringleaders, both of whom were sentenced in absentia to 10 years in jail. Flamour Domi, a Kosovar Albanian living in Brussels, who was sentenced to six years for his part in the operation, was also absent.
But his son, Donald Domi, was led away in handcuffs after the presiding judge, Ms Els D'Hooge, sentenced him to 10 years.
Ms D'Hooge said that the prosecution had used mobile phone records to show that Donald Domi was involved in smuggling immigrants on an almost daily basis.
She said that Domi's offence was compounded by the fact that he continued to smuggle immigrants in containers even after he had learned of the fate of the victims of the Co Wexford tragedy.
The public prosecutor, Mr Freddy Vandamme, said he would study the verdict before deciding whether to appeal against the sentences but he acknowledged that the jail terms imposed on those found guilty were close to what he had asked for. "The only problem could be that the driver was not convicted for unintentional killing," he said.
The driver, Mr Jochen Schroven, said that medication he was taking meant that he had slept very deeply on the night that the stowaways entered his container and that he had heard nothing.
He said he was "devastated" when he heard about the discovery in Co Wexford.
"I find it incredible that people can do things like that. I cried a lot. I spent two weeks in prison and I cried there a lot," he said.
The victims, most of whom were from eastern Turkey, paid up to €5,000 each to be smuggled to Britain but were mistakenly loaded into a container bound for Ireland.
Four of the five survivors live in Ireland, where they have been granted permission to remain on compassionate grounds. Two of the victims lost their spouses and all their children in the tragedy.
