SAN DIEGO: Federal officials on Monday charged a man believed to be the captain of a boat carrying migrants that capsized near San Diego, killing four passengers.
The man, a Mexican national, was charged with two counts of bringing people into the country illegally.
US Border Patrol agents were notified at about 11:30 p.m. Friday of a small boat crossing the international maritime boundary between Mexico and the US
The Border Patrol found the wooden skiff in the surf off Imperial Beach after it had overturned in high waves. Six people were found on the beach just before midnight, one of whom was pronounced dead and another who was rescued after being found under the boat.
About two hours later, authorities received a report of someone in the water near Imperial Beach Pier. A Coast Guard crew responded and found three people in the ocean, all dead.
The five survivors were transported to a hospital for treatment.
According to the complaint, several passengers said the boat had engine problems. They urged the captain to return to Mexico, but he refused.
One man was trapped inside the cabin below deck when the boat overturned and submerged with him and several others inside, the complaint said. He was freed after Border Patrol agents flipped the boat over. Another was injured after he was trapped under the boat and a piece of metal penetrated his leg, the complaint said.
The suspected captain faces up to life in prison or the death penalty if convicted.
“Maritime smuggling is extremely dangerous, and we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law every individual responsible for these preventable tragedies,” US Attorney Adam Gordon said in a press release.
Another man was a passenger on the boat and charged for being deported and trying to enter the US again illegally. He was first removed from the US in 2012 and most recently on Nov. 3 of this year.
Migrants are increasingly turning to the risky alternative offered by smugglers to travel by sea to avoid heavily guarded land borders, including off California’s coast. Vessels leave Mexico in the dead of night and sometimes chart hundreds of miles (kilometers) north.
There have been several incidents in recent years of migrant vessels capsizing en route to California.
Man accused of captaining migrant boat that capsized, killing 4, is charged
https://arab.news/g35e4
Man accused of captaining migrant boat that capsized, killing 4, is charged
- The man, a Mexican national, was charged with two counts of bringing people into the country illegally
- The Border Patrol found the wooden skiff in the surf off Imperial Beach after it had overturned in high waves
Italian suspect questioned over Bosnia ‘weekend sniper’ killings
- The octogenarian former truck driver from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, is suspected by Milan prosecutors of “voluntary homicide aggravated by abject motives,” according to Italian news agency ANSA
ROME: An 80-year-old man suspected of being a “weekend sniper” who paid the Bosnian Serb army to shoot civilians during the 1990s siege of Sarajevo was questioned Monday in Milan, media reported.
The octogenarian former truck driver from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, is suspected by Milan prosecutors of “voluntary homicide aggravated by abject motives,” according to Italian news agency ANSA.
Lawyer Giovanni Menegon told journalists that his client had answered questions from prosecutors and police and “reaffirmed his complete innocence.”
In October, prosecutors opened an investigation into what Italian media dubbed “weekend snipers” or “war tourists“: mostly wealthy, gun-loving, far-right sympathizers who allegedly gathered in Trieste and were taken to the hills surrounding Sarajevo where they fired on civilians for sport.
During the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo that began in April 1992 some 11,541 men, women and children were killed and more than 50,000 people wounded by Bosnian Serb forces, according to official figures.
Il Giornale newspaper reported last year that the would-be snipers paid Bosnian Serb forces up to the equivalent of €100,000 ($115,000) per day to shoot at civilians below them.
The suspect — described by the Italian press as a hunting enthusiast who is nostalgic for Fascism — is said to have boasted publicly about having gone “man hunting.”
Witness statements, particularly from residents of his village, helped investigators to track the suspect, freelance journalist Marianna Maiorino said.
“According to the testimonies, he would tell his friends at the village bar about what he did during the war in the Balkans,” said Maiorino, who researched the allegations and was herself questioned as part of the investigation.
The suspect is “described as a sniper, someone who enjoyed going to Sarajevo to kill people,” she added.
The suspect told local newspaper Messaggero Veneto Sunday he had been to Bosnia during the war, but “for work, not for hunting.” He added that his public statements had been exaggerated and he was “not worried.”
The investigation opened last year followed a complaint filed by Italian journalist and writer Ezio Gavanezzi, based on allegations revealed in the documentary “Sarajevo Safari” by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic in 2022.
Gavanezzi was contacted in August 2025 by the former mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karic, who filed a complaint in Bosnia in 2022 after the same documentary was broadcast.
The Bosnia and Herzegovina prosecutor’s office confirmed on Friday that a special war crimes department was investigating alleged foreign snipers during the siege of Sarajevo.
Bosnian prosecutors requested information from Italian counterparts at the end of last year, while also contacting the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, it said. That body performs some of the functions previously carried out by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Sarajevo City Council adopted a decision last month authorizing the current mayor, Samir Avdic, to “join the criminal proceedings” before the Italian courts, in order to support Italian prosecutors.
