“I do not recognize anyone from those photos as the Cayuco patterns.” Thus, the statement that the three witnesses who yesterday declared during the second session of the trial held at the Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife against five migrants as alleged patterns of a Cayuco that arrived on October 30, 2023 to the port of the Christians with 210 people on board were summed up. The boat arrived with two of its deceased occupants and a third person died in the same port of South of Tenerife, while being assisted by health services.
The session revolved around the declaration of these witnesses, two men and a woman, as well as the testimony of the forensic experts who attended or valued the wounds of some of the people who arrived alive, but in poor state of health, to the coast of Tenerife in that boat. One of the occupants suffered the amputation of several fingers of both feet And many others They suffered burns and lacerations.
In this trial, the Public Ministry requests a 20 -year prison sentence for each of the five defendants For crimes against the right of foreign citizens, three crimes of homicide for serious recklessness and five crimes of injuries for serious recklessness.
None of the witnesses interviewed yesterday by videoconference identified the defendants as the patterns of the boat in which they traveled from the coast of Gambia to Tenerife, despite Show them various photographs and even when the defendants themselves put in front of the video team.
The prosecutor said that there was an obvious contradiction before what was declared on Tuesday by these witnesses with what was said in the judicial headquarters and before the Police when they were interrogated in 2023.
At this point in view, the statements made at that time by some of these witnesses were attempted in video but the technical media prevented it and it was not possible to clearly hear what they said on that day. There was nothing more than a slight murmur of the people who intervened in that act.
Besides, Another witnesses said yesterday that at that time he did not understand very well what he was asked because the interpreter did not dominate his dialectso he could declare some issue that did not fit what he really meant. And it is that in the area from which these migrants come, some speak Wolof and others, Mandingo.
In this sense, the defense lawyers expressed their discomfort for the poor quality of the reproductions of these testimonies, although they trust that they will be subsen for the next day, last session scheduled to meet these issues as well as to read the final qualification reports. Also It is planned to interrogate another migrant whose mobile phone also worked Yesterday, in addition to resorting to other recordings to listen to the testimony of three other witnesses who previously declared but could not be located yesterday.
The Cayuco left around eleven days before reaching Tenerife from the coast of Gambia. Some of the witnesses indicated that they left from different points in smaller paters until they were mounted in the port of Bakau in the Great Cayuco that brought them to the Canary Islands.
Another of the issues that controversial maintained by the witnesses is that they affirmed Do not have seen whether or not they threw corpses down the vote during the journey and assured that they traveled with sufficient food and water.
