The head of the Court of First Instance and Instruction number 1 of Arrecife, Ricardo Fiestas, has issued a search and arrest warrant both in national territory and in Morocco against Ibrahim Bilou, for his participation in the organization of the trip of the boat that sank on February 15 in the Los Cocoteros area, in Teguise, and that caused the death of 25 immigrants. The magistrate accuses him of a crime of 25 reckless homicides, as well as another of illegal trafficking of people.
This is the third individual whom the judge accuses of the death of the immigrants, whose boat collided with a rock a few meters from reaching the coast of Lanzarote. The other two skippers, Youssef Fotohu and Mohammed Sidi, were captured shortly after the tragedy and were arrested and imprisoned in the Tahíche penitentiary center.
According to what the judge has been able to verify, Ibrahim Bilou, who is in an unknown location, had already traveled several times to the Canary Islands skippering an illegal boat. When he managed to reach the Archipelago, the police arrested him and repatriated him to Morocco. Once there, he repeated the operation. On this occasion, in addition, it is suspected that Bilou is responsible for recruiting these immigrants in their place of origin who, later, boarded the cayuco, where they met their death.
In this tragedy only six people survived. Two of them have already been expelled from the country and the other two are waiting for the Immigration Office to make a decision, which could allow them to stay in Spain for collaborating with justice by recognizing the skippers.
The majority of the fatal victims of this shipwreck were minors and children. The boat left Tarfaya and intended to reach the coast of Lanzarote. It only needed about 20 meters but, unfortunately, it did not succeed.
Spanish justice hopes, now, that the full weight of the law falls on these skippers and trusts that they will serve their full sentence in Spain.
