In what can be called a comedy of errors, a 27-year old Moroccan man suffocated to death after trying to illegally enter Spain while being hidden in a suitcase in the trunk of a car. The victim’s older brother was the one who tried to smuggle him into the country by ferry.
Though the older individual entered the country legally from Melilla, a tiny Spanish territory in North Africa, he noticed that his brother was not breathing and was in a state of unresponsiveness. The ferry staff was alerted and crew members in the port of Almeria tried in vain to resuscitate the man.
Crew members as well as emergency services workers in the port of Almeria tried in vain to resuscitate the man.
Police have charged the man’s brother with involuntary manslaughter.
In May police discovered an eight-year-old boy from the Ivory Coast curled up inside a suitcase — without air vents — that was being carried across a pedestrian crossing from Morocco into Ceuta, Spain’s other north African territory.
A security scanner picture of the boy curled up in the suitcase served as a shocking reminder of the lengths migrants take to try to seek a better life in Europe.
His father, a legal resident in Spain, had tried to smuggle the boy into Spain because his income was too low to request residency papers for his son.
The boy was eventually granted temporary permission to live in Spain with his parents.
Each year, thousands of migrants risk their lives trying to enter Ceuta and Melilla, which have the European Union’s only land borders with Africa, to try to enter Europe.
Many migrants try to scramble over the seven-metre (23-foot) fences that separate the Spanish cities from Morocco while others try to swim or sail from shores on the Moroccan side.
