Migrant crisis continues as another boat arrives in Sicily

Italy’s boat people crisis continued apace yesterday as yet another vessel carrying migrants landed in the port of Catania. On a bright sunny Sicilian morning, set against the dramatic backdrop of snow-topped, volcanic Mount Etna, this might have been a day to take a portrait of the harbour. Except there was nothing picturesque about this human cargo.

As 220 Africans from the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea and Nigeria, all apparently in good health, made their way off the Italian navy rescue boat, they were not to know that their fate and that of their migrant compatriots was being discussed by EU leaders in an emergency summit in Brussels.

If the whole experience was a bit new to the Africans, it was a case of business as usual for the rescue services. The migrants were allowed off the boat one at a time as they went through the equivalent of a human cattle pen.

They were vetted, their temperatures taken and they were given a number. Then they waited, during the long, warm morning, to be processed and registered. With the world’s media on one side of the crowd barriers observing them, you could understand why they may have felt like caged exhibits.

Yesterday’s boatload was picked up two days ago, just 40 miles off the coast of Libya where their two overcrowded, 12-metre long vessels had got into trouble.

They were the lucky ones, given that a rescue ship arrived before their rickety boats, already taking on water, sank. Most of these boat people were able-bodied young men. There were also six women, four of them pregnant, on board.

Disembarked

Not all the migrants were disembarked. Three of them, presumed traffickers, had been separated from the others to be taken immediately into custody. This was the second time in four days alleged traffickers were arrested on the harbour front.

Last Monday night, the alleged captain and first mate of the ship in which 750 people are believed to have died were arrested on arrival with the other 25 survivors.

Both these men, Tunisian Mohammed Ali Malek and Syrian Mahmud Bikhit, have already been charged with multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and the promotion of clandestine migration.

As the investigation into last weekend’s tragedy continues, details have emerged of the violent treatment of the sub-Saharan African boat people by their Arab traffickers.

Survivors claim that prior to their departure from Libya, 1,200 of them were held in an abandoned house that was guarded by uniformed and armed personnel.

Violence

In the climate of violence that reigned in this “departure camp”, some of the boat people were either beaten or starved to death. The survivors claim that they were taken out to their vessel, first in pick-up lorries and then in dinghies.

One of them was shot because he had stood up without permission in the dinghy. The young man’s body was then thrown into the sea.

Many of the survivors have identified the arrested men, Ali Malek and Bikhit, as the men in charge of their vessel, pointing out that they used a satellite mobile phone to maintain contact with Libya throughout the trip. As for the capsizing of the boat, different witnesses have spoken of three collisions between their vessel and the Portuguese merchant ship King Jacob, which had come to their aid.

Meanwhile, the 24 dead people recovered from the scene of last week's tragedy were buried in Malta yesterday at a funeral attended by Malta's deputy prime minister Louis Grech, Italy's interior minister Angelino Alfano, Greece's solidarity minister Theanous Fotiou and European commissioner for migration Dimitris Avramopoulos