Smugglers are raking in hundreds of thousands of euros for every migrant boat they send to Spain, it has emerged.
It comes after two men who steered a packed migrant boat from the Algerian coast to Almeria had their five-year prison sentences confirmed by Andalucía’s High Court (TSJA) this week.
Judges ruled that the pair endangered the lives of the 29 people on board, each of whom had reportedly paid around €8,000 for the clandestine journey.
It means the smugglers had collected €232,000 before the vessel had even left for the coast of Andalucia.
The ruling upholds an earlier conviction for offences against the rights of foreign nationals, dismissing the defence’s arguments and concluding that the crossing was carried out in conditions that posed a clear and serious risk to everyone onboard.
The case hinged partly on video recorded by one of the passengers during the crossing.
Although that individual refused to appear in court, citing fear of reprisals, the images were handed over to police and clearly showed the two defendants acting as the boat’s skippers. A protected witness also identified them.
The boat was intercepted on August 5 last year, when a Guardia Civil patrol located a semi-rigid vessel roughly 24 nautical miles east of Carboneras at 5.19pm.
Officers found the vessel to be just 7.2 metres long and 2.7 metres wide, heavily overloaded with nearly 30 Algerian nationals travelling without documents.
According to the court, the pair had set off with the group at around 2am from the Algerian coastline. They were responsible for refuelling the engine at sea and navigating via GPS.
Investigators believe they were working in tandem with a wider smuggling network, however these individuals have not yet been identified.
Judges described the voyage as ‘extremely dangerous’, noting that the boat travelled mostly under cover of darkness and carried no safety gear at all.
There were no life jackets, no flotation devices, no flares, no radio equipment, no navigation lights and not even basic tools to bail out water.
Weather conditions deteriorated during the crossing, with winds reaching force five and waves climbing to 1.25 metres. The vessel, the court said, was highly unstable and at constant risk of taking on water.
The route was also directly in the path of a busy shipping lane used at that moment by 74 commercial vessels, creating an additional collision hazard. With no lights, the migrant boat would have been virtually invisible to other traffic.
Read more Andalucia news at the Spanish Eye.
