Alex Trelinski
AN Algerian minor has been charged with 12 counts of reckless homicide after a dinghy transporting migrants sank off the Alicante Province coast.
Only five people, including the boy. survived last month’s journey from Algeria after they were pulled out of the sea by the Salvamento Maritimo.
Each of the victims paid up to €2,500 to secure their dangerous passage, which ended 22 miles off the Costa Blanca.
The craft drifted for six days after the engine failed and bad weather then capsized the dinghy.
The teenager was a member of a migrant trafficking gang that organised the journey that the police described as ‘impossible to achieve’.
January’s fateful voyage was made on a five-metre long inflatable boat with a tiny engine working off a low fuel supply.
A Policia Nacional statement said: “An overload of people; the absence of GPS systems and the inexperience of the skipper who barely knew how to handle the boat all combined to cause problems.”
A criminal inquiry was launched after one of the survivors made a complaint to authorities.
It was concluded that the teenager was part of the criminal trafficking gang.
He has been transferred from a Foreigners Detention Centre to a juvenile prison facility.
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