Gambiaj.com – (TENERIFE, Spain) – A court in the Spanish Canary Islands has ordered the immediate release of a Gambian youth who spent two years in prison after being accused of captaining a migrant boat in which at least a dozen people died. The Audiencia de Santa Cruz de Tenerife recognized his status as a minor, a key development that led to his release last Friday.
K., who turned 18 last Wednesday, had faced a potential 15-year prison sentence after appearing earlier this month in a trial centering on the October 2023 boat arrival that left multiple casualties. A day after his birthday, the court handling his case ordered his release “without waiting for the written judgment.”
According to a judicial order revealed by El Día and accessed by The Gambia Journal, the judges acknowledged that the identity documents submitted by K. in 2023, his birth certificate and passport, were never formally contested. No evidence, the court held, had conclusively disproved his claim to be a minor.
As a result, the court invoked the principle of presumption of minority age, grounded in Spanish Minor Law, the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the jurisprudence of both the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court.
This presumption, the judges said, outweighs forensic assessments suggesting he could be as old as 21. The expert reports presented by the prosecution were described as offering only an “impression” of adulthood, without the certainty required to override documentary evidence.
K.’s case first came to public attention in March 2024, by which time he had already spent four and a half months in custody. His lawyer submitted documentation confirming his birth on 12 November 2007, consistent with what K. had told the Red Cross upon arrival.
The young Gambian reached Los Cristianos, Tenerife, on 28 October 2023 after a nine-day journey from Gambia with 226 other migrants.
One child was found dead upon arrival, and another person died in hospital shortly after. Survivors later reported that between 10 and 20 others died during the crossing due to dehydration and starvation.
His case echoes previous incidents in the Canary Islands in which two Senegalese boys were wrongly treated as adults after being accused of captaining a boat that arrived in Gran Canaria in December 2023.
They spent three and four months in prison before their cases were revisited. In one instance, prison officials flagged the detainee as a minor; in the other, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child intervened to demand proper treatment.
In April 2024, the Audiencia de Las Palmas acknowledged the “regrettable” circumstances faced by the Senegalese youths, and by November the Juvenile Court annulled all proceedings after determining that Spain had violated the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
K.’s release now adds renewed scrutiny to the treatment of migrant minors in Spain’s criminal system, particularly those caught in deadly crossings where authorities often assume captains among survivors.
