“I wanted to help my compatriots. In retrospect this was a stupidity. “Look where I am now.” It was the attitude of Dimitër K., a 19-year-old Albanian student in the Netherlands who is accused of trafficking in human beings after helping Albanians to cross illegally from the port of Rotterdam to England.
Dutch media write about the last court hearing.
“He looks away from his mother. She came to court this Wednesday, where 19-year-old Rotterdammer has to answer for human smuggling.
She hears it with a sigh. Last summer, K. arranged a taxi bus to take five Albanians on a ferry to the port of Rotterdam. From there they wanted to make the illegal passage to England. It did not go that far. “Agents were waiting for the van in the port in a known area where many illegal immigrants climbed into the trailer and arrested K”, writes ad.nl.
Hundreds of Albanians try to emigrate to the UK via Rotterdam every year. Truck drivers are regularly taken to court because they are caught with people in their cargo. Now the suspect is a high school student.
Dimither K. describes himself on the one hand as ‘a child’ who allowed himself to be used by illegal immigrants at least ten years older.
As a child he went with his mother from Albania to the Netherlands, where she works in a supermarket.
“Yesterday she gave me her last fifty euros to buy clothes for this session,” he told the court.
The 19-year-old says that this was the first and last time he was involved in human smuggling, says K., who is attending an MBO training to become a pedagogical employee and according to him in his words wants to help boys who are in prison. The public prosecutor is seeking 12 months in prison. The court will decide in two weeks.
