Judge calls for tough sentences in human smuggling cases

A judge yesterday called for tougher punishments for human smuggling as he jailed a man for seven years for helping four Indians try to leave the island.

In handing down judgement, Mr Justice Joseph Galea Debono said Malta was serving as a means of transit between Africa and countries to the north and this was greatly endangering the people being trafficked as well as the social fabric, the economy and the national security of the country.

The judge said the courts should take a serious look at similar crimes, within the parameters given by the legislator, in order to serve as a deterrent against similar practices.

His comments were made before he jailed 39-year-old Gamil Abu Bakr, who was found guilty by jurors of aiding the four men in two botched escape attempts in 2005.

Mr Bakr has effectively only one more year to serve, considering that he has already spent four years in preventive custody and has been given remission for good conduct.

The four Indians, Harpred Singh, Hanar Parbinder, Vasden Singh and Faqir Chand, had all testified during the compilation of evidence that they paid Mr Bakr €2,330 each to help him them leave the island.

On their first attempt on November 21, 2005 the four men tried to board a boat at Grand Harbour but they lost hold of it and it drifted away. On the second try, two weeks later, they managed to make it four miles out of Valletta but then had to call for help as the boat was rocking badly and they had engine trouble.

When they were taken in for questioning they produced telephone numbers, licence plate numbers and the address of the accused besides taking the police to his flat in Mellieħa, according to police testimony given during the trial.

Making submissions on bail, defence lawyer Roberto Montalto referred to a Magistrates' Court judgement in which a woman, Doris Montebello, was jailed for three years on appeal for trafficking 25 people. He said his client was guilty of trafficking only four people, which was a lot less than 25 and so he asked the court to take this into consideration. Lawyer Lara Lanfranco, representing the Attorney General's Office, argued that the number of people involved in the trafficking was more than three, which in the eyes of the law increased the amount of prison time.

She added that, fortunately, the four Indians had been saved by the armed forces because otherwise they would either have been dead or missing or their bodies would have been found with no one held accountable for their deaths.

Mr Bakr, now a Maltese citizen, arrived in Malta in 1995 as a refugee, got married here and had two children with his Slovenian wife, who returned to her home country a short time after the court case began.