The Prosecutor's Office requests eight years in prison for the two alleged skippers of a boat that was intercepted near Lanzarote in April 2018 with 16 immigrants on board and who will be tried by the First Section of the Provincial Court on January 21. This trial was originally set for last July but will finally be held next week in Gran Canaria.
The Public Prosecutor's Office maintains that M.D and N.E.B, "in agreement with other unidentified persons and motivated by the desire for profit, charged various amounts of money to 16 immigrants to take them with them to the Canary coasts, knowing that they were violating the rules on entry into the national territory and that once they arrived they would be in an irregular situation in Spain."
Specifically, according to the indictment, the boat left the coast of Asfi (Morocco), being intercepted by Maritime Rescue about 70 miles north of Lanzarote, specifically at about 2 pm on April 1, 2018, with all the immigrants inside "thus achieving the desired purpose."
According to the Prosecutor's Office, "the accused were skippering the aforementioned vessel from its departure in Asfir (Morocco) to its arrival on the coast of the island of Lanzarote, using a GPS device to help them." The vessel, it adds, "lacked any security system, as well as life jackets, thereby endangering the lives of the immigrants."
The Public Prosecutor's Office considers that the narrated facts constitute a crime against the rights of foreign citizens and therefore requests a sentence of eight years in prison for each of them, "paying the time that the defendants have been deprived of liberty for this reason." Both defendants have been in pre-trial detention since April 19, 2018.
