More charges in MV Sun Sea case
Posted June 6, 2012 3:20 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SURREY (NEWS1130) – Three more men have been charged with human smuggling in after the MV Sun Sea arrived on our coast carrying Tamil refugees almost two years ago.
That brings the total to six men facing charges; one is in France, while the two others are not believed to be in Canada, but arrest warrants have been issued for them anyway.
RCMP Superintendent Derek Simmonds says they’ve done 700 interviews for this case so far, almost all of them in foreign languages.
“Our investigators needed some interviews completed in Norway. We had to obtain their assistance to get that done,” notes Simmonds.
“We have collected between 300,000 and 400,000 pages of information that have all had to be analyzed, sifted through, and indexed and cataloged for the Crown to be able to take to the courts to identify what evidence is in them,” he tells us.
Simmonds says charges stayed against two of these men were simply procedural, since they were on “a different information.” All six men are now on what he calls “one piece of paper.”
The charges related to the MV Sun Sea migrant ship which arrived in BC waters in the summer of 2010, carrying 492 Tamil refugees.
