*A third man has been arrested in connection with the death of an Afghan immigrant found in a shipping container on 16 August.
The 47-year-old from Dungannon in Tyrone was arrested in Merseyside in connection with the death of Meet Singh Kapoor.
Meet Singh Kapoor, 40, was found dead in a shipping container with 34 people alive at Tilbury Docks in Essex.
The man was held at Liverpool Ferry Port on suspicion of manslaughter and facilitating illegal entry into the United Kingdom and is due to transfer to Essex Police custody this evening, the force said.
Two lorry drivers have already appeared in court in connection with the case.
Stephen McLaughlin, 34, and Timothy Murphy, 33, both from Derry, Northern Ireland, are charged with conspiring to facilitate illegal entry into the UK.
They are due to appear next at Basildon Crown Court in November.
Mr Kapoor was among a group of 35 immigrants found in the container, including 13 children, the rest of whom survived the ordeal.
The group, whose ages ranged from one to 72, are believed to have fled Afghanistan after suffering persecution.
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*France needs to "get its act together" and deal with growing numbers of asylum seekers in Calais rather than blaming Britain, a former home secretary has insisted.
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*France needs to "get its act together" and deal with growing numbers of asylum seekers in Calais rather than blaming Britain, a former home secretary has insisted.
Lord Howard of Lympne said he had "some sympathy" with the mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, amid increasingly desperate efforts by migrants to get into the UK.
But he said she was "directing her frustration and her anger at the wrong target" by demanding that London "take responsibility" and threatening to blockade the port.
"The general principle which every member state of the European Union has subscribed to is that refugees, people fleeing persecution, should apply for asylum in the first safe country they reach," Lord Howard told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"France used to take this very seriously. When I was home secretary, which was quite a long time ago now, we had an agreement with France under which if people came to the UK from France and claimed asylum we returned them to France and France dealt with their claim.
"That is what really ought to happen."
The Tory peer said the root issue was that France had "lost control of its borders" after signing up to the Schengen agreement that "dismantled" restrictions between countries.
He added that the previous French administration under president Nicolas Sarkozy had recognised that and threatened to withdraw from Schengen - which the UK never signed up to.
"The mayor of Calais ought to be directing her frustration at president (Francois) Hollande and getting him to take the kind of action that president Sarkozy was talking about," Lord Howard said.
"We have control of our borders. But it is the countries of the Schengen agreement that ought to get their act together and deal with this problem. We have retained control of our borders, and it is about time members of the Schengen agreement did the same."
*TWO men have been charged in connection with the death of a man found in a container at Tilbury Docks in England.
Stephen McLaughlin, 34, of Limavady, Derry, and Timothy Murphy, 33 of Elmgrove, Derry, are both charged with conspiring to facilitate illegal entry into the UK.
The men, who are both lorry drivers, are to appear in custody at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court today.
Meet Singh Kapoor, 40, from Afghanistan, was found dead inside the container at the Essex port on August 16.
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*The numbers of people trafficked into Britain and Northern Ireland are likely to rise again in 2014 after a leap of almost 50 percent last year, police said on Wednesday.
Almost 50 possible victims are found each week, figures from the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
In the first three months of 2014, 556 possible trafficking victims were discovered by police, compared to 407 in the same period last year
This means the year's total is on course to be 30 percent higher than 2013, which was already 47 percent higher than the year before.
The discovery of 34 Afghan Sikhs and one dead man in a shipping container, and of 15 migrants in a truck on a motorway, has brought the issues of trafficking into light in recent days.
Nick Alston, the police and crime commissioner for Essex, where the Sikhs were discovered, said the case brought the light the "evil of the abuse and exploitation of vulnerable people".
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*A group of illegal immigrants rescued from inside shipping containers at an Essex dock are believed to be Sikhs from Afghanistan, police have said.
Thirty five people, including 13 children aged as young as one, were found after workers at Tilbury Dock heard "screaming and banging" coming from inside one of the containers as it was being taken off a ferry.
Essex Police launched a homicide investigation after one man was found dead inside the container. Further tests are needed to determine a cause of death of the man believed to be in his 40s.
The man was traveling with his wife and two sons, aged nine and 12. They part of a group of 15 families who were travelling from Afghanistan to escape religious persecution.
The Sikh population in the Middle Eastern country has fallen drastically down the years. There are now believed to be as little as 3,000 Sikhs currently in Afghanistan, down from 100,000 around 30 years ago.
The 34 survivors on board the containers were taken to hospital to be treated for hypothermia and severe dehydration.
The P&O vessel left Zeebrugge in Belgium on 10pm, on 15 August and arrived the next morning in Tilbury.
Supt Trevor Roe, of Essex police, said: "We now understand that they are from Afghanistan and are of the Sikh faith.
"We have had a good deal of help from partners within the local Sikh community in the Tilbury area to ensure that these poor people, who would have been through a horrific ordeal, are supported in terms of their religious and clothing needs."
He added: "The welfare and health of the people is our priority at this stage.
"Now they are well enough, our officers and colleagues from the Border Force will be speaking to them via interpreters so we can piece together what happened and how they came to be in the container."
Peter De Waele, a spokesman for the federal police in Belgium, said he believes the stowaways were already inside the container when it arrived in Belgium.
He told the Press Association: "We saw that this container was there for one hour in all, in an area where there are a lot of cameras, a lot of people and a lot of cars driving. It was around 6pm so it wasn't dark.
"We think that the possibility [is that] the victims were already on the container before it was put down in Zeebrugge because in that area it is rather impossible to put 35 people in that container."
He said police will be studying CCTV footage to try and identify the driver who dropped off the container at the dock in Zeebrugge.
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Police are expected to question a group of immigrants who were found inside a shipping container at a busy port as they continue their investigation into how they were trafficked into the country.
Essex Police has been liaising with Interpol and other international authorities after a man died and 34 men, women and children were taken to hospital after they were rescued from a container at the Port of Tilbury.
The unit arrived in the UK from Zeebrugge in Belgium early yesterday and police are keen to track its movements before it was loaded on to the ship on mainland Europe.
Belgian authorities believe they have identified the lorry which delivered the container to Zeebrugge after scouring CCTV for clues, the BBC reported, though it is still not known where the lorry came from.
Chief Inspector Peter De Waele from the Belgian police said: “The Belgian civil police is checking all the images and my colleagues are very, very hopeful that we find the truck who put the container in Zeebrugge.
“I think it is very, very important that we have the identification of that truck and also of the driver.”
Many of those rescued have spent the night in hospital, and officials are now planning to interview them at a reception centre when they are well enough before they are referred to the UK Border Agencies.
Police said there are “language issues” and interpreters will be brought in, and that only one of those found on the container has arrived at the centre so far.
Officers said they were treating yesterday’s incident as a “homicide investigation” after the man’s death.
The immigrants, all thought to be from the Indian subcontinent, were rescued after port authorities heard banging and screaming from inside the container at around 6.30am yesterday.
One man died and the others were taken to hospital suffering from hypothermia and dehydration.
Among them were 18 who were taken to Basildon Hospital with dehydration and hypothermia, two in a serious but not life-threatening condition.
They have responded well to treatment and the 11 adults and seven children are now “medically fit enough” to be released, a hospital spokeswoman said last night.
Nine people were taken to the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, while a further seven were taken to Southend Hospital, all with the same ailments.
No information has been released about the ages of any of the people or the relationship between them.
www.stopthetraffic.org.uk
Describing them as victims of “people trafficking”, Superintendent Trevor Roe of Essex Police said they had been in the container a “significant amount of time” and that now police were working with international agencies to establish their movements prior to arriving in the UK.
www.stopthetraffic.org.uk
Investigators have begun tracking the movements of the container, which was one of around 50 on board the P&O Ferries commercial vessel the Norstream, and have made “good progress”, Mr Roe said, adding: “That is a key line of inquiry.”
Mr Roe said the investigation will “span a number of countries”.
He said: “It is a homicide investigation... we will be looking to see where the origin and the gangs or whoever may (be) involved in this conspiracy to bring these people in this way over to this country. Clearly we need to try and bring them to justice.”
Asked to clarify the nature of the homicide investigation, police said charges could include murder and manslaughter, although there was no suggestion anyone on the container was a suspect.
The superintendent added: “Nothing has been ruled out. We need to speak to the people in the container, where they have come from, what their motivation is and who’s involved.”
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*Police have said that the people found in the shipping container at Tilbury Port yesterday were from Afghanistan.
The people were aged from one to 72-years-of-age.
There were 13 children in the container.
A man died and 34 men, women and children were taken to hospital after they were rescued from the container in Essex.
Officers said they were treating yesterday's incident as a "homicide investigation" after the man's death.
Police are investigating how the group was trafficked into Britain and have been liaising with Interpol and other international authorities.
The unit arrived in the UK from Zeebrugge in Belgium early yesterday.
Many of those rescued spent the night in hospital after being admitted for hypothermia and dehydration.
The group was rescued after port authorities heard banging and screaming from inside the container at around 6.30am yesterday.
Describing them as victims of "people trafficking", Superintendent Trevor Roe of Essex Police said they had been in the container a "significant amount of time".
