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The lorry in which 39 bodies were found in Essex.Credit:Getty Images

Prosecutors said all the suspects were part of a gang that charged about $23,000 per person to transport migrants in trailers through the Channel Tunnel or by boat.

Jurors heard harrowing evidence about the final hours of the victims,who tried to call Vietnam's emergency number to summon help as air in the container ran out. When they could not get a mobile phone signal,some recorded goodbye messages to their families.

The trapped migrants — who included a bricklayer,a restaurant worker,a nail bar technician,a budding beautician and a university graduate — used a metal pole to try to punch through the roof of the refrigerated container,but only managed to dent it.

“There was no way out,and no-one to hear them,no-one to help them,"prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones said during the trial.

The judge said the defendants would be sentenced in January. The maximum sentence for people-smuggling is 14 years in prison,while manslaughter carries a maximum life sentence.

Kelly Matthews,of Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service,said that “nothing can bring back the lives lost on that day or the loss caused by the horrible,unlawful and dangerous actions of these defendants.

“But we hope these convictions bring some measure of solace to the families in the knowledge that justice has been done,” Matthews said.