The captain of a boat with five migrants has been sentenced to eight years in prison by the Alicante Provincial Court. The boat drifted for more than two weeks with almost no food or water. The people on board had to drink seawater or their own urine to survive.
The judge gave the defendant five years in jail for violating the rights of foreign citizens and three further years for four charges of manslaughter relating to the deaths that happened during the crossing. He is not charged with the fifth death because he was thought to be the ship’s co-captain and, as such, another person who committed these crimes. During the trial, the defendant said he was innocent and that he was simply one of the twenty crew members on the homemade boat. He even said that one of the dead people was the real captain. But two protected witnesses said he was the one who drove the boat on the trip. The judgement also says that the defendant didn’t pay for the crossing, which led the judges to believe that he would pay for the trip by being the captain of the ship for the organization. The judges say that he was the only one who knew how to drive the boat.
Immigrants from Somalia
The court’s decision makes it clear that the events took place in late April 2025, when the boat left the coast of Algeria with the goal of illegally bringing migrants, principally from Somalia, to Spain. There were 21 individuals on a boat that was just six meters long, plainly overloaded, and had no safety features. The engine went down about 122 km from the coast of Spain, and they were stuck at sea for 16 days.
They had to sip seawater or their own pee to stay hydrated for more than two weeks of hell. Five of the passengers died, while the bodies of four others were thrown overboard. An aeroplane saw the boat on May 8 and saved it. The survivors, who were dehydrated and in bad shape, were rescued and taken to shore by the Salvamar Fénix ship from Maritime Rescue in Xàbia. Four of them had to go to the General Hospital of Alicante. Three of the four bodies thrown into the sea could not be found. Between May 10 and 13, the fourth body was located in the inland waters of Ibiza and Formentera.
The verdict said that the crime happened because the passengers on the small boat were in danger because they were on a trip without any safeguards or safety procedures. “The defendant failed to do his duty to avoid the clear risk of a potentially deadly outcome by taking control of the vessel,” it says. Life jackets were the only thing that could keep them safe.
