The news had the effect of a bomb. Migrants explained that passengers had been killed by the pirogue captains. These revelations triggered the opening of an investigation that allowed the identification of 5 of the 8 alleged victims. A 14-month-old baby of Gambian nationality, traveling with his mother and uncle, is one of the eight people who were allegedly murdered during the crossing of a pirogue that arrived in El Hierro on December 28, 2024 with 224 occupants on board, including 14 children and 57 women. Also among the dead are a father and son, aged 50 and 18, of Guinean nationality, according to the statement from the Guardia Civil made public today, Wednesday, February 19, 2025 by the government agency. Seven people, supposedly the captains of the pirogue, located in Tenerife, Madrid, León and Almería, have been arrested.

The Guardia Civil has identified five of the eight dead and continues to work to identify the other people who died in a boat that left seven days earlier from the Senegalese island of Bassoul. The relatives of four of the victims have already filed a complaint, the note adds. Upon arrival on the coast of the Canary Islands, the migrants had to be immediately attended to by medical personnel due to serious injuries, probably due to an altercation that occurred during the crossing, the Guardia Civil said. The agents investigated the incident to clarify the origin of the injuries and, after collecting testimonies from several of the occupants of the cayuco, they discovered that in addition to these 224 people, eight others should have arrived and probably died, killed by the captains arrested as part of this investigation.

Three of the arrested were in the Las Raíces reception centre in La Laguna (Tenerife). The duty court of that city sent them to prison on eight counts of murder, as well as for injuries, degrading treatment, violations of the rights of foreign citizens and failure to provide assistance, as announced last week by the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands. These three detainees were joined by four others, also in pre-trial detention by order of the duty courts of the towns on the peninsula where they were located and arrested.

According to the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands, the people killed on board the Cayuco during its eight-day crossing were killed because of their nationality, which was different from that of the alleged perpetrators.

Second murder case in less than a month

This is the second time in less than a month that cases of murders have been discovered in canoes bound for the Canary Islands. The previous case, also reported by the Guardia Civil on December 29, took place on November 3 in a boat that arrived in El Hierro with 207 occupants after six days of sailing from Senegal. In this canoe, four people were killed two days before the boat reached the Canary Islands.

The Guardia Civil arrested seven people for these acts, and the investigation was opened following the testimonies of the occupants of the cayuco, who said that the crossing had been "a real nightmare". The agents were able to establish that the boat had initially left Gambia and had stopped on the Senegalese island of Bassoul, where most of the occupants had embarked. After three days at sea, three of the captains in charge of maintaining order on board the boat decided to take reprisals against several migrants. In fact, one of the occupants, perhaps affected by the difficulties of the journey, suffered an episode of disorientation, which led the three skippers to blame him for the misfortunes of the journey and to hit him several times, as well as those who defended him. As punishment, they would have decided to kill four of them to scare the rest of the migrants in the cayuco, according to the testimonies collected by the Guardia Civil.

Authorities have identified three of the victims in this case, whose families have been informed of the deaths and the arrest of the alleged perpetrators. The fourth victim is being identified in order to contact his relatives. Among the group of migrants who arrived in El Hierro on this ship on November 3, there was also a man who had to undergo emergency surgery due to a deep chest wound, consistent with a stab wound.