Ship’s Crew Sentenced For Killing Stowaways

A court sentenced a cargo ship captain and his assistant to life in prison Sunday for ordering the 1992 murders of eight African stowaways.

Captain Vladimir Ilnitskiy and assistant Valery Artemenko ordered the killings aboard the Bahamas-registered MC Ruby, the Rouen court found.

The court gave 20-year sentences to seamen Petr Bondarenko and Serguei Romachenko and steward Oleg Mikhailevskiy for shooting the stowaways and dumping their bodies in the Atlantic.

The Ukranian crew killed seven stowaways from Ghana and one from Cameroon. A ninth stowaway, Ghanaian Kingsley Ofusu, hid in the cargo hold and later reported the murders to police.