The Brussels correctional court delivered a 44-month prison sentence on Monday – half of which was suspended – to a 40-year-old Ghanaian man found guilty of smuggling two minors.
The man had been arrested when he landed at Brussels Airport with two minors in the possession of false passports from the Ghanaian capital Accra on 17 September 2022. According to the defence, the mothers of both children had asked the 40-year-old to accompany them to Europe.
The man himself presented an authentic Ghanaian passport, but the two minors were carrying German passports that had been reported stolen. The children stated that they were on their way to visit their mothers who lived in Germany, but that they did not know the 40-year-old man accompanying them.
Organised people smuggling
The plane tickets had been purchased separately but from the same travel agency. Several passport photos of other Ghanaian minors were found on the 40-year-old's mobile phone. The man's statements also changed several times. According to the Prosecutor's Office, it was therefore clear that organised human smuggling had taken place.
"My client is guilty of people smuggling, but this was a one-off offence and he did not gain anything from it," the man's lawyer pleaded.
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"He is part of the same religious community in Germany as the mothers of those two minors, and they asked him to accompany the children to Europe because they know that my client travels back and forth regularly. My client did it as a service of friendship."
The defence said that the mothers had also promised to make a statement when they came to collect their children from a reception centre in Belgium, but had not done so in the end.
