Maternal care makes Afghan women a smuggler

The Erding District Court sentenced a 31-year-old Afghan woman to a ten-month suspended prison sentence for trying to smuggle a ten-year-old child into the Federal Republic of Germany via Athens on New Year's Eve last year.

Erding / Airport - The woman who came to Germany as a refugee in 2015 was stopped by the federal police at Munich Airport.

Judge Björn Schindler did not consider the commercial proceedings alleged by the Landshut public prosecutor's office to be proven.

What was involved with a wad of banknotes weighing 6000 euros could not be clarified in the negotiation.

Christine Rappold from the public prosecutor's office accused the woman, who is herself a mother of four children between the ages of two and 13, of having smuggled the child of a family friend on December 31, 2019.

Because the federal police seized 6000 euros from the 31-year-old, the investigators assumed that this must have been the smuggler's wages.

The woman and her defense attorney reported that it was a friendship service out of maternal care, for which she was only reimbursed the costs.

The grandmother pleaded with the Afghan woman to bring the ten-year-old child to Germany.

She did that on board a Lufthansa plane from Athens - accompanied by two of her own children.

The grandson was provided with papers from another child of his own.

At the immigration control the fraud was noticed immediately.

A 49-year-old federal police officer testified on the witness stand that the Afghan woman confessed immediately.

The officer stated that she assumed that the 6,000 euros must have been the smuggler's wages.

This is also supported by the fact that only 20 and 50 euro banknotes were secured.

The defense attorney disagreed.

Rather, it was about the savings of several years.

Her client earned a little extra as a cleaning lady in her Munich asylum seeker accommodation, around 180 euros a month - paid in cash by the state capital's social department.

She always had the money with her “because she was afraid that her husband would take it and spend it”.

The marriage is in a crisis.

Rappold and public prosecutor Anselm Schmidt did not accept this version.

In their plea, they called for a year and two months imprisonment on probation - and the confiscation of the frozen 6,000 euros.

The defense attorney did not want to know anything about commercial proceedings and considered a fine to be sufficient.

Schindler imposed a ten-month suspended sentence on the mother, who had previously had no criminal record.

In addition, she has to pay 1,500 euros to Caritas Erding.

For the judge, the smuggling was out of the question.

The commercial procedure - which aggravates the punishment - cannot be proven.

That's why she should keep the 6,000 euros.

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