Following an indictment filed by the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Organized Crime and Corruption in the Case Indicting Two Ghanaian Persons for Committing the Crime of Migrant Smuggling, a hearing was held today at the Basic Criminal Court – Skopje 1.
Following the competent prosecutor’s opening remarks, the defendants, a German citizen and an Italian national, pleaded guilty.
The court ruled that the defendants were given an alternative measure – a suspended sentence of two years ‘imprisonment which will not be carried out if they do not commit another crime within five years, at the same time as defendants’ day. their detention will be lifted and they will be banished from Macedonia.
In weighing the sentence, the court took into account the mitigating circumstance that the defendants are not perpetrators of other crimes and are not being prosecuted in other countries, that both are employed in the countries of which they are nationals, and that the first defendant is the father of a minor child, and the second defendant is ill.
In early January this year, the accused intending to smuggle three migrants boarded a car with German license plates in Greece. For the smooth passage, the migrants were provided with EU IDs and handed over to them. At the Bogorodica Border Crossing Point, during control by a police officer, the migrants were identified with a Dutch, Swedish and German ID card.
The three migrants, who also come from Ghana, paid a total of 500 euros for travel costs, and under the agreement they were to pay the remaining 1,000 euros per person upon arrival at the final destination Austria.
