Another arrest in truck deaths as details of journey emerge

LONDON (AP) - Police arrested a second suspect in the deaths of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants and a Chinese refugee came forward Tuesday to say his cousin called repeatedly during a four-month odyssey from China through Russia and into Western Europe and was almost certainly among the dead.

The immigrants were found 58 dead late Sunday at the English port of Dover, apparently suffocated in the back of an unventilated truck on the disastrous final leg of their trip.

The Dutch driver of the truck was detained in Dover and held on suspicion of manslaughter, and on Tuesday, Dutch authorities announced the second arrest. They said they captured the suspect during a raid on three houses in the Dutch port of Rotterdam on Monday.

Police did not release the suspect's name and refused to say if the suspect was a man they had been pursuing - Dutch engineer Arie Van der Spek, 24, who owned the company that leased the truck. Police said earlier that Van der Spek registered the company, Van der Spek Transporten, on June 15. He vanished before police showed up at his Rotterdam apartment Monday.

In Dover, Dutch and British police interrogated the truck driver who brought the young immigrants, most in their 20s, on the last leg of their trip from southern China's Fujian province. And in Canterbury, the only two survivors remained under police guard Tuesday, traumatized by their futile struggle to escape the truck.

Quoting unidentified hospital sources, reports in London newspapers said the two men told an interpreter how they banged on the truck's walls and shouted, their desperation mounting as their companions began to pass out and die.

The survivors are key to tracing the smugglers who organized the hellish journey across the English Channel from Belgium - the immigrants were packed in among tomatoes, and the truck's refrigeration unit was turned off as temperatures outside reached the high 80s, the hottest day of the year so far.

Police hoped the two men would soon be fit enough for formal questioning.

''To have 60 young people in the back of a truck, there would have to have been some organization to get these people over from China,'' Kent county police Detective Superintendent Dennis McGookin said. ''In liaising with the Chinese police hopefully we will know more on this soon.''

Meanwhile, a Chinese immigrant said he was sure his cousin, Chen Lin, 19, was among the dead.

Yang Chen, who slipped into Britain in January and has applied for political asylum, said Chen Lin's parents had borrowed $21,000 for the trip. Chen Lin left the city of Changle in Fujian province in February, Yang told the British news agency, Press Association.

Chen Lin phoned home regularly during the tortuous journey through China, Russia, on foot through the mountains of the Czech Republic and then to the Netherlands, Yang said. He said his cousin was accompanied along the way by armed smugglers.

''The last call was from Holland on Sunday and they said they were traveling to the United Kingdom that night. ... They have not heard from him since,'' said Yang, 20.

An estimated 150,000 Chinese are in Britain, many working for low wages in restaurants in London's Chinatown district. A Chinese attorney in London, Wahplow Tan, said relatives of other victims feared deportation if they came forward.

The disaster has focused international attention on the syndicates that traffic in people and on the desperate risks illegal immigrants take to flee oppression or poverty. Fujian, the Chinese province the immigrants left, is one example: it is notorious for immigrant-smuggling gangs known as ''snake heads'' who charge up to $60,000 per person for perilous, illegal passages the West.

European leaders pledged new attempts to stem the tide.

''There is a huge willingness now to try and tackle this problem of trade in human misery and human beings,'' British Prime Minister Tony Blair said after meeting European Union leaders in Portugal.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said the international community must ''join hands to crack down on illegal immigration.''

Still, the immigrants keep coming. Britain's Home Office said 128 people had been caught at Dover alone since Sunday, including Iraqis, Afghans, Iranians and Poles.

Customs officers find up to 2,000 illegal immigrants hidden in trucks at or near British ports each month - and believe many more slip through. In the first four months of this year, 1,690 Chinese applied for political asylum, the Home Office said, compared with 2,625 for the whole of 1999.