A lorry driver from Northern Ireland has said he was in his cab with the curtains drawn and watching "a wee bit of Netflix" when a group of migrants were allegedly loaded into his trailer.
Thirty-nine Vietnamese people died in the airtight trailer as it crossed the channel from Zeebrugge to Purfleet in Essex that night.
23-year-old Eamonn Harrison, of Newry, Co Down, said he had originally thought he was going to carry a load of Coca Cola on that day, 22 October last year.
His boss Ronan Hughes told him that morning that "there would be nothing from Coca-Cola but there would be a load of stolen goods."
The jury at the Old Bailey heard that Mr Harrison drove down a small road in Bierne in northern France where he met a Romanian man who told him where to park the lorry.
The man had told him to close the curtains to his cab, and he had taken the opportunity to "watch a wee bit of Netflix".
Mr Harrison said he heard "a bang on the door" and the man gave him "a thumbs up to move off, that's what I did".
CCTV pictures of his lorry driving off show that the ladders used to get into the trailer are still down.
"Would you normally drive with your ladders down?" Mr Harrison's barrister Alisdair Williamson QC asked him.
"No I wouldn't", he replied.
When Mr Williamson asked why he would not normally drive with the ladders down, Mr Harrison said: "You're just asking to get pulled over".
CCTV seen by the jury showed three taxis driving down the same road in Bierne, before Mr Harrison's lorry arrived.
In a French woman's evidence read to the jury, she said she had seen migrants running from a farm building into a truck on the road that morning.
Eamonn Harrison dropped the trailer at Zeebrugge port that afternoon. It crossed the channel unaccompanied.
By the time it was unloaded at Purfleet, all 39 migrants had died from a lack of oxygen.
When asked by Mr Williamson if he had "any idea" what he was getting involved in, Mr Harrison said he did not.
"Did you - in order to work off your debt to Mr Hughes - agree that human beings could be put in the back of your trailer?"
"No I did not" said Mr Harrison.
He said the reality of what he had been doing started to hit him the following day when news came through that the bodies had been found in the trailer.
"It's not good. That's the trailer that I shipped. I was the last person that could have done something," Harrison said.
He was arrested at the port Dublin as he returned home from Cherbourg.
Eamonn Harrison said he had heard since that his life was at risk in prison.
He denies 39 counts of manslaughter and one of assisting illegal immigration.
He is one of four men on trial after being charged with involvement in the case.
43-year-old George Nica also denies 39 counts of manslaughter, but has admitted being part of a people-smuggling conspiracy.
Alongside Mr Harris, Valentin Calota, 37, and Christopher Kennedy, 24, have pleaded not guilty to people-smuggling.
Maurice Robinson, 26, who collected the container in Essex and discovered the bodies has pleaded guilty to 39 counts of manslaughter and to conspiring in people-smuggling.
Haulage firm boss Ronan Hughes, 41, has also admitted 39 manslaughter charges.
