Migrants land on a beach in Dungeness, Britain on Nov. 24, 2021.(Photo: Xinhua)

A Belgian court on Wednesday is to deliver its verdict in a trial of 23 people suspected of being involved with a gang that smuggled Vietnamese migrants to Britain, 39 of whom died in the back of a truck in October 2019.

The trial, which started in the city of Bruges on December 15, focused on the fact that many of the victims left from the outskirts of Brussels, where the gang allegedly had two safe houses to group migrants.

The bodies of the migrants - 31 men and eight women, aged 15 to 44 and all from Vietnam - were discovered in Britain when the container they were in was opened. They had suffocated to death in extremely hot weather during the ferry crossing. They had tried without success to pierce the metal container's roof with a pole.

The crime triggered police investigations on both sides of the Channel and in Vietnam.

The Belgian trial stemmed from a May 2020 police operation in which several addresses, most in the Brussels region, were raided and Vietnamese suspected of links to the gang were rounded up.

Most of the defendants were allegedly members of the people-smuggling ring. The remainder allegedly were accomplices, used as safe-house guards, grocery shoppers for the migrants, or taxi drivers.

Prosecutors said the "very well-organized" gang was specialized in clandestinely transporting people into Europe then Britain for a total fee of 24,000 euros ($27,000) per person.

The investigation determined that at least 15 of the 39 migrants who died in the container were loaded inside in Belgium on October 22, 2019.

The container was believed to have made a detour through northern France before being loaded on to a ferry from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.