The Provincial Court of Las Palmas is judging this Friday morning in Arrecife the alleged organizer at the origin of the Los Cocoteros boat, which ended the lives of 25 people in February of last year on the coast of Lanzarote. He was arrested four months after the tragedy, when he arrived with another boat with immigrants to the Island.
This is Brahim Jbilou, a native of Morocco, who is being tried on this occasion for allegedly acting as captain on the other boat, which also arrived in the Charco del Palo area in Lanzarote on June 20, 2009, four months after that tragedy.
Jbilou was identified by some of the survivors of the boat as the person who recruited the members of the boat on land, in the Moroccan area near Guelmin. Court number 1 of Arrecife, which was investigating these events, issued an international arrest warrant against him.
After his arrest in June, Jbilou denied his relationship with the Los Cocoteros boat but admitted in court that he had traveled up to seven times to Spain captaining a boat. He has no criminal record.
Provisional prison
This person has been in provisional prison since June and faces, together with the Mauritanian citizen Mahmoud Ichiar, who would be the other captain of the boat, seven years in prison for a crime against the rights of foreign citizens.
According to the prosecution's indictment, the boat left El Aaiún on June 19 and arrived in the Charco del Palo area, just a few hundred meters from Los Cocoteros. There were 27 immigrants on the boat who had paid between 800 and 1,000 euros for the journey. Of these, six were minors.
ACN Press
