Seven Kosovo Albanians jailed over migrant deaths
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:45 GMT
PRISTINA, June 17 (Reuters) - Seven Kosovo Albanians were convicted and sentenced on Friday to up to 19 years in prison over the deaths of 15 illegal migrants in 2009, a spokesman for the European Union mission in the country said.
Fifteen Kosovo Albanians including a one-year-old baby were trying to cross into the European Union that years when their boat sank in the Tisza River between Serbia and Hungary.
Kosovo is a small Balkan country of around 2 million people, but its citizens already make up the fifth-largest group of asylum seekers in the EU.
"Out of the 8 defendants, one was acquitted, and seven were sentenced together to a total of 66 years of imprisonment and 450,000 euros ($637,300) in fines," Blerim Krasniqi, a spokesman for the European Union police and justice mission (EULEX), said.
The longest individual sentence imposed was 19 years and the shortest two years.
The Kosovo court, made up of two EU-appointed judges and one ethnic Albanian, said the charges were organised crime and smuggling of migrants. It said the group that offered migrants illegal passage to EU member states made significant profits.
Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, is one of the poorest countries in Europe with a more than 45 percent unemployment rate.
Around 30,000 young people enter the job market every year and many leave the country, most often illegally, by paying 2,000-3,000 euros to human traffickers in hopes of building a better life in mainly EU countries.
(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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