A driver charged with trying to smuggle seven Vietnamese migrants into the country in a van aboard a Dieppe to Newhaven ferry is awaiting the verdict of a jury.
The migrants were freed by a crew member using an axe on the Seven Sisters ferry to break them out of a tiny and cramped hidden section of a Ford Iveco van.
They were screaming and banging for help as they struggled to breathe but the van driver – Anaa Al Mustafa – had gone to sleep in a cabin on the ferry.
The jury were asked to decide whether they were sure that Al Mustafa, 43, knew or should reasonably have known that he was being asked to drive a van containing seven migrants.
The prosecution and defence disagree about the significance of forensic evidence relating to the hidden section in the van.
Al Mustafa said, when he was interviewed under caution, that he was to be paid 5,000 euros for driving the van from France to Britain.
But he told the jury that he had meant 500 not 5,000 and that he had considered buying the van so may have touched some parts of it when checking it over.
He had already done a dry run in the van although Al Mustafa said that he had merely brought the Romanian-registered van over for an MoT test in Liverpool.
After the jury had spent just over five hours in retirement, they were sent home for the night by Judge Christine Laing, the honorary recorder of Brighton and Hove.
Al Mustafa, a self-employed builder and father of two, of Heather Crescent, Swansea, denies trying to smuggle migrants into Britain in February.
The jury is due to resume its deliberations tomorrow.
How much did his nose grow by while he was saying all this?