A Spanish court has sentenced two smugglers to nine years in prison each for the deaths of four Moroccan migrants who drowned they were forced to jump out of a boat last year near the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa, AP News reports.
The Ceuta prosecutor’s office said on Thursday that the sentences were handed down without trial after a plea bargain was reached with the two men. A Ceuta man and a Moroccan resident picked up nine young people on a pleasure boat in Morocco in January 2023 with the intention of smuggling them into Spain.
The smugglers forced the migrants to jump into the water and swim to shore as the wind picked up on the approach to the port city of Ceuta. Five of them managed to do so, but the rest drowned. Their bodies were found a few days later.
The two smugglers were charged with four counts of manslaughter and an offence against the rights of foreign nationals. Before Wednesday’s plea bargain, the prosecution had demanded a 32-year prison sentence for them. Prosecutors said they were ordered to pay 205,000 euros ($218,000) in compensation to the victims’ families.
The suspects were arrested in March 2023 after an investigation by Spain’s Guardia Civil police based on video footage of the migrants minutes before they jumped into the rough water.
Tens of thousands of migrants fleeing poverty, conflict and instability in West Africa try to reach Spain by boat each year. Most sail in large open boats to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, while others from Morocco, Algeria and Middle Eastern countries try to cross the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean to reach mainland Spain. Thousands of people die during this dangerous journey.
