Two men of Kurdish origin were charged at the Turku District Court on Tuesday with aggravated expediting of illegal entry into Finland for four Iraqis.
According to the indictment, the defendants had assisted the Iraqi men in Sweden in October 2008, transporting each of them separately in a car on board a passenger ship from Stockholm to Turku, where the smuggled men applied for asylum.
The Iraqis’ asylum applications had earlier been rejected in Sweden.
The prosecutor in the case called for unconditional prison sentences of about 1.5 years against the smugglers, demanding further that the men should be obliged to forfeit to the state slightly more than EUR 28,000 as the proceeds of an illegal act.
In court, one of the Iraqi Kurds who had been smuggled to Finland said that he had paid the organisers of the trip USD 10,000 in Iraq.
The sum of money the prosecutor demands the men to forfeit to the state is roughly equal to four times the travel expenses reported by the witness.
The suspects claimed in court that the smuggled men were their cousins.
One of the smuggled Iraqis was granted a Finnish residence permit a month ago. Hence in his case the charge of illegal entry would no longer be valid.
The defendants also claimed that there is no evidence that would indicate that they were paid for expediting of illegal entry for the Iraqis. The accused said that they had just been helping their compatriots.
According to the defence, the accused could be imposed a maximum penalty of suspended prison sentences or fines.
The District Court is to hand down its decision in a couple of weeks.
