According to Expatica News, the regional government office announced that Spanish authorities stopped a boat carrying 176 illegal immigrants trying to reach the island of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. The immigrants were all from sub-Saharan Africa and the authorities said the ship, the M.V. Polar, appeared to have started its voyage in 'Guinea Bissau or Cape Verde, or even both countries.'

On October 4, 2004, the Employment Ministry alleged that in the first nine months of this year, 11,473 would-be immigrants from north and sub-Saharan Africa were similarly intercepted off the coasts of Spain. A government study published in August claimed that organized crime gangs, which used to send immigrants only from Morocco, have now begun using as points of departure West African countries such as Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

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A court in Frankfurt, Germany sentenced three German border police officers to nine months probation, according to The Associated Press. The report continues that the court found the three men guilty on charges of assault which resulted in the death of Aamir Ageeb, who died on May 28, 1999, after being restrained on a deportation flight about to take off for Khartoum, Sudan.

Bernd Mesovic, a trial observer for the refugee rights group, Pro Asyl, said the ruling had a 'bitter aftertaste'  because 'it can give the impression that any public officer who kills someone can also count on getting off easy in the future.' Judge Heinrich Gehrke also criticized the German asylum policy, comparing immigration jails to Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. He stated that refugees were kept in border police facilities for years, treated degradingly, and bound 'like wild animals.'  However, Interior Ministry spokesman, Rainer Lingenthal, called the judge's comparisons an 'outrageous slander,' but added that the ministry would see if the comparisons were in any way justified.