A Cyprus court sentenced a Syrian national to three years in prison after finding him guilty of causing the death by negligence of a 3-year-old girl from dehydration aboard an overloaded migrant boat that was adrift for six days without adequate supplies of food and water. According to the facts of the case, the captain had told the passengers at some point in the journey to throw any remaining bottles of water overboard in a bid to remove any indications that the boat had departed from Lebanon.
The boat set sail on Jan. The number of people arriving in Cyprus as migrants has fallen precipitously over the past three years after the government in the European Union member took a string of get-tough measures. Equally, asylum applications plummeted from a record 21, to 6, over the same time period while repatriations increased to nearly 11, from 7, In light of the fall of Bashar Assad in Syria late last year, Cyprus' Deputy Minister for Migration Nicholas Ioannides said some 40 Syrian nationals on average are requesting to either withdraw their asylum application or to revoke their international protection status.
Ioannides said some Syrians have already returned to their homeland. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in.
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