Section 15 of the Provincial Court of Madrid has sentenced to four years in prison the head in Spain of an organization that illegally introduced Chinese citizens into the United Kingdom, through our country, five of whom were arrested at the Lanzarote airport.
According to the sentence, dated July 10, the defendant, also of Chinese nationality but in a regular situation in Spain, was part of a network that "from at least August 2014 until January 2016 was dedicated to bringing citizens of his own country from China who were interested in leaving that country to introduce them illegally into the United Kingdom."
In exchange for money, "the organization first managed their trip to Spain and once here, specifically in Madrid, housed them in some of the apartments they had rented", where "they remained waiting to obtain the plane tickets and the necessary false documentation", which "was made in China and sent from there". After that, "they left Spain for the United Kingdom, either directly or through another European country" or other Spanish locations.
Three detainees in Lanzarote had already been arrested a month earlier
"On some occasions, the citizens subject to illicit trafficking did not achieve their purpose of reaching their final destination, despite some of them trying more than once, being arrested at the airport when they tried to leave our country or after being returned by the authorities of the United Kingdom or the country of transit when they realized the falsity of the passports that the organization had provided them", the sentence states.
Five of these arrests, among the long list included in the ruling, took place at the Lanzarote airport, three of them on December 16, 2014, and the remaining two two days later. In addition, the first three detainees on the island had already been arrested at the Madrid airport a month earlier, and two of them were arrested again in February 2015 at the Bergamo airport.
The five detainees in Lanzarote were carrying false passports from Portugal, Macao, and Korea and were arrested when they were about to take flights to Dublin.
He coordinated the movements and the receipt of passports
The convicted person, according to the Provincial Court of Madrid, "was the head of the organization in Spain, under the direction and orders of the heads in China, and as such, coordinated the movements of the trafficked persons and the activity of the smugglers, organized their accommodation and maintenance, and carried out the necessary procedures for their transfer to the country of destination, coordinating the receipt of passports and making flight reservations".
Below him, it is indicated, "the organization had smugglers called 'teachers', who taught and gave instructions to the trafficked persons on how they should act and what they should say in police controls to make the trip safely and without raising suspicions, even accompanying them on many occasions during the trips, specifically to leave the national territory".
Undue delays
For these facts, the defendant was in provisional detention from January 26, 2016, to December 29, 2017, and has now been sentenced to four years in prison, as well as the payment of half of the court costs, after admitting the facts and a judgment of conformity being issued. However, the time spent in pre-trial detention for this case will be credited to him.
Specifically, he is considered the perpetrator of a continued crime of document forgery in conjunction with a crime against the rights of foreign citizens, although with the mitigating circumstance of undue delays. According to the sentence, the case was paralyzed in the investigating court "since November 2017".
In the sentence, Section 15 of the Provincial Court of Madrid indicates that although the defendant was part of a network "together with other people in China and Spain", the present case has not been pursued against them "because they have not been identified or because they are in an unknown location".