Following a two-year investigation, the judge recommended that Vladimir Ilnitskiy, captain of the MC Ruby, be charged with the lesser offense of complicity in kidnapping, prosecutors said.
The case goes back to November 1992, when the Ruby's crew discovered seven Ghanaians and a Cameroonian who had stowed away on a trip from the Ghanaian port of Takoradi to the French port of Le Havre.
According to Ofusu Kingsley, a ninth stowaway, the crew threw the eight men into the sea, where they perished.
Kingsley, who managed to evade detection and later told his story to authorities, is now a dishwasher in a Le Havre restaurant.
Prosecutors said the investigating judge's report accused crewmen Dzamal Arakhamiya, Petr Bondarenko, Sergei Romashenko, Oleg Mikhailevskiy and Valery Artemenko of kidnapping as well as murder.
The crewmen and the captain are being detained pending trial in three different jails in northwestern France.
The MC Ruby is owned by MC Shipping Inc of New York, which said the detained crew members were not employees of the company.
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