A court in Greece has sentenced eleven Turks to ten years in jail each and to large fines for immigrant smuggling.

The eleven were the crew of a Turkish-registered ship which earlier this month disembarked nearly three-hundred immigrants, mostly Afghans and Iraqi Kurds, on the Aegean island of Naxos after running into bad weather.

The immigrants told the Greek authorities they boarded the ship in the Turkish port of Ismir after paying two-thousand dollars each to be transported to Italy.

The crew was arrested as it was making its way to the Turkish coast.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service