By TesfaNews,
SUDANESE authorities have brought over 600 Sudanese and foreign illegal immigrants, including the recently rescued ones, to the Dongola Court located at the Northern regional State as part of its intensified crackdown on crime and human trafficking activities in the country.
The court sentenced the Sudanese with a fine totaling SDG 400 thousand (US $50,000) while ordered the passport and Immigration department to repatriate all the foreigners, mostly Eritreans and Ethiopians, to their respective countries.
Joint Sudanese-Libyan border forces have rescued more than 600 illegal migrants on last week after being abandoned by human smugglers in the middle of the desert.
The Sudanese government continued to warn illegal immigrants wishing to travel to Libya against human traffickers underscoring the enormous risks they faced during their ordeal.
Spokesman of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), Colonel Al-Sawarmi Khaled Saad said, in a press statement, that the death toll of the deceased in the incident reached so far to nine people, after the death of one person on Saturday, stressing that the number of deaths might increase eventually as there are other survivors that are in a very sorry state of health.
He announced that the joint forces managed to capture about another 30 migrants in the desert, who will be transported to Dongola later.
Sudanese, and East African nationals used in the past to cross to Israel or apply for asylum in Western countries from Egypt. However, Libya become recently a favourite destination for immigrants who want to reach Europe by boats through the Mediterranean Sea.
Sudanese defence minister Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein on his part told the Sudanese parliament on Monday that the deployment of joint border patrols with Chad, Eritrea and Ethiopia is showing results by deterring such criminal activities along the borders besides containing cross-border attacks and illegal drug and weapon transfers.
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