Twenty years of imprisonment and a three million fine : this is the sentence inflicted by the Crotone magistrate Elisa Marchetto on Gun Ufuk, the 29-year-old Turkish citizen accused of being one of the smugglers of the "Summer love", whose shipwreck on 26 February last year, caused the death of 94 migrants in Steccato di Cutro .
The crimes charged are aiding and abetting illegal immigration, negligent shipwreck and death following aiding and abetting illegal immigration.
The preliminary hearing judge accepted the requests of prosecutor Pasquale Festa, raising the fine from 2.1 to 3 million.
The judge, at the end of the abbreviated procedure, also sentenced the alleged smuggler to compensate some civil parties , the amount will be established by the civil judge: the relatives of the victims, the Ministry of the Interior and the Calabria Region .
Ufuk is the only one of the four alleged smugglers who has chosen the abbreviated procedure, while the others are undergoing ordinary trials . He was arrested on March 8 after being identified in Austria, where he had taken refuge after managing to escape.
«I was just the mechanic of the boat and I exchanged the payment for the trip with the job of engineer to repair the engine. I have never driven the boat . I am so sorry for the pain caused to the families of the dead people", this is Ufuk's defensive line.
« I had to escape Turkey for political reasons. I had been arrested because I was considered to be part of the movement that led the 2016 coup attempt . In 2019 I was in prison for eight months because I criticized Erdogan and his policies. When I left Turkey for two years I had to report myself to the police and I am still banned from leaving Turkey. It is not easy for those considered coup plotters to live in Türkiye. We are discriminated against by the authorities and cannot find work. For this reason I decided to leave, but I didn't have the necessary money and so I agreed to be the mechanic of the boat that was supposed to arrive on the Italian coast. The organizers of the trip introduced me to Bayram, my friend, who was the captain of the boat and who died in the shipwreck ", he explained.
(Unioneonline/L)