People who get on a small boat to try to cross from Africa to Europe certainly put their lives in danger, even if no mishap occurs during their navigation, because a journey in a small boat "is dangerous at any time, whatever the state of the sea."
The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) includes in a ruling made public this Tuesday the same criteria that guides the international search and rescue obligations assumed by Spain in the Mediterranean and in nearly one million square kilometers of the Atlantic Ocean south of the Canary Islands.
This is the principle that explains that, on occasions, Maritime Rescue resources have been deployed to assist cayucos located 500 kilometers or more from the islands, even though the merchants who spotted them reported that they were sailing "normally."
In this case, the Criminal Chamber of the TSJC uses it to reject one of the arguments put forward by the defenses of the skippers of a cayuco sentenced to four years in prison by the Las Palmas Court to demand a more lenient sentence, if the rest of their reasons for demanding acquittal were not taken into account.
The cayuco in question was rescued by the Guardamar Calíope on July 23, 2023 south of Gran Canaria with 103 people on board, who had left twelve days earlier from Kafountine (Senegal).
The original ruling did not recognize any mitigating circumstances for the accused, only the fact that "they were moved by the desire to leave their country, intending to stay in Spain or another EU country in order to achieve a well-being not achieved in their country of origin."
Nor did it consider it sufficient to grant the benefit of acting out of a "state of necessity" the fact that one of the skippers claimed that he took the helm to ensure that his son, a 14-year-old boy who was traveling with him, arrived safely on land.
But, in addition, the defenses asked that it not be considered that the people who were on board the boat had been in danger, since there was no episode of risk during the crossing, they argued.
The Chamber replies that not only are there witnesses who confess that they were afraid and that it is "obvious" that 103 people was an "excessive" passage for the size of the cayuco, but that it has also been proven that there were no life jackets for most of the occupants, that the water ran out during the crossing and that the waves entered the boat, so it was necessary to bail out.
In the opinion of the magistrates, "the defendants necessarily knew when they undertook the journey" that all these conditions "make a small boat dangerous, at any time, whatever the state of the sea."
