The National Police have arrested nine men of Algerian origin for skippering three boats with 48 migrants on board, including minors and a baby.
The boats were rescued by Maritime Rescue and the Civil Guard near the coast of Almería between the 10th and 12th of last December.
The similarity of the trips - all originating in Algeria - and the arrival times to the Almeria coast alerted the authorities, who after an investigation identified the organizers.
They recruited their clients through social networks, threatening them with knives so that they would jump into the sea in front of the police presence.
Eight of those arrested are already in prison.
The National Police arrested another 22 boat owners in Almería during the first nine months of 2023, according to the latest available data.
The first of the boats was located on December 10 by Maritime Rescue about 37 kilometers from the beaches of Almería.
It had 14 people on board of Algerian and Moroccan nationality, who were treated at the Temporary Care Center for Emigrants (CATE) in the capital of Almería.
A day later, another inflatable boat was found transporting 17 other migrants of the same nationalities—including three minors, one of them a nursing baby—who were rescued by the Civil Guard.
The same security force saved the 17 people who arrived in another boat near Carboneras on December 12.
All of them were also treated at the care center located in the port of Almería.
The similarities found between the three boats arriving consecutively — like many dozens of others that arrive on the growing Algerian route every year since 2019 — led the National Police to investigate the details of the journey and try to identify the organizers.
The police work made it possible to find out who they were and also that they had recruited the migrants in Algeria and Morocco through social networks, where the so-called
pateras-taxi have become popular
.
Furthermore, they found out that these were not their first trips to the Spanish coast and that the organization to which they belonged was in charge of all the logistics: preparing the boats, skippering them, refueling supplies and finding their way along the route using satellite navigation systems.
“With this methodology, human traffickers obtained great economic benefits,” the National Police explained in a statement.
These types of trips usually have a price of between 3,000 and 7,000 euros per person, according to police sources.
No security measures
The boats lacked safety measures—the migrants did not receive any life jackets for the journey—and were in very poor condition.
Its engine, in fact, had very little power, which made the trip between the coasts of North Africa and those of Spain very complicated.
Circumstances “that have seriously endangered the lives of the crew on board,” the National Police have highlighted.
On one occasion, the organizers also threatened the migrants with machetes so that they would jump into the sea in front of the police presence and even asked them for more money or valuable objects to carry with them during the journey.
Finally, nine people of Algerian nationality have been detained by agents of the Unit Against Illegal Immigration Networks and Documentary Falsities (UCRIF) of the Almería Police Station.
They have thus managed to dismantle a criminal organization dedicated to the introduction of people irregularly into Spain from northern Morocco and Algeria.
The case is in the hands of the Court of Instruction number 5 of Almería, which has ordered prison for eight of the nine arrested.
They are not the only ones for these facts.
Until last October, the National Police of Almería arrested 22 people for directing boats to the coasts of the Andalusian province and all were sent to prison, according to what the main commissioner of Almería, Gumersindo Vila, announced at the beginning of that month.
Arrests are increasingly common given the growth in recent years of the migratory route from Algeria to Almería.
The proximity – the distance between both coasts is about 130 nautical miles, about 220 kilometers – means that the journey can be completed in around three hours if sea conditions allow it.
Police sources explain that the usual thing is for the boats to make landfall on one of the many beaches in the Cabo de Gata area, where the migrants get off and the skippers return to the Algerian country, sometimes even with a traveler.
Sometimes there are problems, such as the waves that diverted a boat from its route last spring, in which two Moroccan men died and were thrown overboard.
Three crew members – men aged 19, 20 and 33, of Algerian nationality – were arrested for this.