An asylum seeker who piloted a boat in the English Channel where four passengers drowned lost his bid to challenge his convictions and sentence.
Ibrahima Bah was convicted of manslaughter and of facilitating a breach of UK immigration law and sentenced to nine and a half years' detention in February 2024, after steering the dinghy in an attempted crossing on 14 December, 2022.
During a retrial at Canterbury Crown Court, Bah said smugglers threatened to kill him if he did not drive the boat, but the prosecution said he was not telling the truth.
The Senegalese national was also convicted of facilitating illegal entry to the UK in the first conviction of its kind made possible by new laws.
Bah brought his case to the Court of Appeal to request permission to challenge his convictions and sentence, but senior judges ruled his case was not arguable.
In their ruling, the three judges rejected all three grounds Bah’s legal team had argued.
Baroness Carr, the Lady Chief Justice, who heard the case alongside Mr Justice Dove and Mr Justice Murray, said: “Although the primary responsibility for the overall offending lay with the traffickers, the applicant persisted in the conduct which arose in the context of other serious criminality and demonstrated a clear disregard for the high risk of death”.
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