Following close coordination between officers from the National Police and the Guardia Civil in Ibiza, two individuals of Algerian origin were arrested last week as the alleged perpetrators of a crime of facilitating illegal migration and violating the rights of foreign nationals. The detainees were operating a type of smuggler’s boat-taxi or return-trip boat that reached the coast of Formentera with nineteen migrants, following a police chase that put the lives of its occupants at risk.
The boat was located by two vessels from the Balearic Guardia Civil Maritime Service, sailing near the coast of Formentera. The officers approached the vessel, repeatedly ordering the skipper of the small boat to desist and stop the boat. Despite the police orders, they ignored them and fled at high speed, crashing violently into the sea with strong, successive impacts. The officers observed that the boat was completely overcrowded, far exceeding the capacity that could be considered minimally safe for the crossing, and that the occupants were crouching down, clinging to the boat to avoid falling into the sea, all of this with reckless disregard for the safety and lives of those on board.
Midway through the chase, the officers detected that a minor was on board, so they slowed down at that point, following the boat’s wake to the landing point, which turned out to be Punta de Ses Pesqueres, a location near the Mola lighthouse south of Formentera, where the boat reached land.
The passengers abandoned the boat, fleeing on foot and began to discard their clothes, with the aim of making it difficult to identify the pilots.
Therefore, the escape manoeuvre was carried out solely with the aim of reaching land and being able to dispose of any evidence or clues that might link them to the operation of the boat, thereby placing allthe occupants of the small boat in a situation of extremely high risk to their physical safety, with the sole aim of evading police action.
This small boat is a vessel approximately six metres in length, made of rigid white fibreglass, with a black perimeter line, a central console with a steering wheel and a 100 hp engine, consistent with those frequently used by criminal organisations, such as ‘taxi boats’ or ‘return-trip boats’. Despite all the efforts made in the initial stages by officers from the Maritime Service, it was not possible to identify the skippers. The boat was carrying nineteen people, all of Algerian origin,including eleven adult men, one adult woman accompanied by her son under the age of ten, and six unaccompanied minors.
Once all the occupants had been located, they were handed over to the National Police, so that the UCRIF could begin the procedures for the return of the adults to their country and carry out investigations and interviews to identify the boat’s skippers. As a result of the investigation, two skippers were arrested, one of whom had previously entered Spain on a small boat via Almería in 2021, using a false identity—a common practice among boat skippers.
The aim of the ‘patera-taxis’ is to make trips from the Algerian coast to the islands of Ibiza and Formentera and return quickly to their point of origin, in order to make further trips, thereby taking advantage of the boat’s capabilities in favourable weather conditions, thereby enabling criminal organisations to make greater profits from human trafficking with a lower investment, as they can use the boats several times, whilst charging more for the journeys by reducing the duration of the trip.
In the case of this small boat, the revenue obtained by the organisation on this journey could amount to the equivalent of 85,000 euros. On this occasion, their plan was thwarted thanks to the swift action of the Guardia Civil, who located the boat at sea as it approached the coast of Formentera. The two detainees were brought before a judge, who ordered their remand in custody.