An 8-year-old Boy, Smuggled in a Suitcase From Morocco To Spain

An eight-year-old boy, Abou, from Ivory Coast who was smuggled into Spain from Morocco in a suitcase has been caught on a Spanish civil guard border security checkpoint between Morocco and Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta on Thursday.

The boy was discovered after a suitcase carried by a 19-year-old lady arriving Ceuta, a Spanish enclave next to Morocco, was passed through the scanning machine.

When the Spanish police opened the case, they found the boy in a "terrible state", a spokesman for the Guardia Civil told AFP.

A Spanish newspaper, El Pais, reported that the 19-year-old is not related to the boy, and was paid by the boy's father who lives in the Canary Islands to carry the suitcase, hoping to be reunited with his son.

It was gathered that the boy's father, also named Abou, had travelled back to Ivory Coast to pick him up, having moved to Gran Canaria in 2013.

The father then reportedly paid the Moroccan courier to carry the suitcase.

"She seemed to hesitate, and it looked as though she didn't want to come through the border. At first we thought that there could be drug packages, but gradually discovered that it was a human body," - a police spokesman said.

The boy's father travelled across the border an hour-and-a-half after his son and was immediately detained by border guards.

Hmmm!... What if the boy had died of suffocation?