The two defendants accused of introducing nearly 210 kilos of hashish into Lanzarote in a boat will finally serve 3 years and 6 months in prison. This was decided in the trial held this Tuesday morning in Arrecife, in which Soufiane Ben Jima and Bellouti Mopuaaatassim have accepted the facts of which they were accused.
In this way, the prosecution's request for 6 years in prison has been reduced to almost half. In addition, Ben Jima and Mopuaatatassim, who have been in provisional prison since they were arrested in September 2015, will have to pay as a fine double the value of the drugs they had in their possession when they were arrested. The prosecutor stated in her indictment that this hashish would have reached a value of 328,991 euros "in the illicit market", so the two already convicted must pay 657,982 euros. The prosecutor initially requested that they be sentenced to pay a fine of 986,974 euros.
According to the agreement reached in the trial, failure to pay that amount implies a subsidiary civil liability of 10 months in prison. This means in other words that, if they do not pay the fine, those 10 months will be added to their prison sentence. In any case, we will have to subtract the almost 9 months that they have remained in provisional prison. In addition, the agreement also includes that the defendants, who are both of Moroccan nationality, will be expelled from the national territory once they have served two thirds of the sentence.
Ben Jima and Mopuaatassim, who had no previous records until now, were arrested on September 11, 2015, by agents of the Yaiza Local Police and the Civil Guard, in the vicinity of the Pechiguera lighthouse, in Playa Blanca. The municipal agents were carrying out a raid when they found them unloading bundles on the coast. With them there was a third person, who fled and was not located.
