VANCOUVER — A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has found four Sri Lankan men not guilty of human smuggling.
Justice Arne Silverman says the men were asylum seekers who had an air of reality to their claim of helping others aboard the MV Ocean Lady get to asylum on the B.C. coast in October 2009.
Silverman says he wasn't satisfied that the men — Francis Anthonimuthu Appulonappa, Hamalraj Handasamy, Jeyachandran Kanagarajah and Vignarajah Thevarajah — were knowingly connected to organized crime.
The Crown had argued the four accused were in charge of a smuggling operation and out to make a profit on people seeking asylum in Canada.
Defence lawyers told a trial that their clients were trying to escape poor living conditions in their home country and seeking a better life and their work did not facilitate organized crime.
In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that people providing humanitarian aid, including family members, were exempt from smuggling laws.
