Left-Wing Politician Guilty of Trafficking 24 Migrants

A Left-wing Swiss politician has been sentenced in court for illegally smuggling 24 African migrants into the country.

Lisa Bosia Mirra is the founder of a refugee aid organisation and a councilor for the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland – the second largest party in the Swiss parliament and the only left-wing party with representatives in the Swiss Federal Council.

She was charged with the crime in April, and this Thursday sentenced and find around £7,000, suspended for two years, in a court in Bellinzona.

The judge claimed that her intentions for committing the crime were good, but stress that she had clearly broken the law.

Ms. Mirra told the Swiss News Agency that she would appeal the ruling and would not resign from politics while the verdict was not in effect.

“The facts have been admitted by the accused, who for two weeks with the help of accomplices organised a network to help these 24 illegal immigrants enter and stay [in Switzerland],” the judge said.

“While we acknowledge the tragic situation of these people, they were not in a risk country but in Italy and could have been helped there.”

Ms. Mirra and an accomplice were caught on in September 2016 after driving four underage boys across the border in a van near San Pietro di Stabio.

On 31 August 2016, on Facebook, Ms. Mirra said she had written a report on “violations” committed on the border.

“Violations begin from when [the migrants] land and continue all along the path that these migrants and asylum seekers take, and to all intents and purposes, they must be reunited with their families,” she wrote.

The Swiss-Italian frontier became a flashpoint in Europe’s on-going migrant crisis in 2016.

For many of the hundreds of thousands of recently arrived migrants in Italy, Switzerland was seen as a route towards the prosperous economies and generous welfare states of Northern Europe.

However, the Swiss Guard blocked more than 4,000 people from entering the country and promised to build a migrant camp to house those trapped on the border, in August 2016, when Ms. Mirra was arrested.