Two of the four alleged smugglers who commanded the boat carrying 180 migrants that sank off Italy’s southern coast on Sunday, leaving at least 67 dead, were taken into custody on Wednesday and charged with murder.
The coercive measures were ordered this Wednesday by a court in Crotone (a town in the Calabria region of southern Italy) against two of the four suspected traffickers, two men aged 50 and 25. The two suspects were arrested on Monday.
A third suspect, a 17-year-old, has been placed under guardianship by the juvenile judge, who will decide on Thursday whether he will remain in custody. A fourth suspect is reported missing. The two adults are responsible for the crimes of clandestine immigration, multiple homicide and bodily harm and were identified by the boat’s survivors.
The shipwreck happened on Sunday morning, when the ship, which had departed four days earlier from Anatolia, on the Turkish coast, sank off Crotone, carrying about 180 migrants, mostly from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
According to the latest official report from the delegation of the regional government of Calabria, local authorities have already confirmed the deaths of 67 immigrants – whose bodies have already been located – and about 80 survivors, 14 of whom are minors.
While the Public Prosecution Service is investigating, doubts are growing in Italy whether the shipwreck could have been prevented. the Italian coastguard acknowledged that the European agency Frontex had seen and alerted the ship’s presence in that area on Saturday, the afternoon before the sinking.
The new leader of the Italian Democratic Party (currently in the opposition), Elly Schlein, called this Wednesday for the resignation of the interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, who was accused, along with the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, of insinuating that immigrants they were responsible for their own tragedy by embarking on such a dangerous journey.
Migration routes in the Mediterranean have resulted in more than 20,500 deaths since 2014, with the central Mediterranean being the deadliest, with more than 17,000 dead and missing in the past nine years, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). In the case of the Eastern Mediterranean route, the number of fatalities – only those recorded – is around 1,700 people.
The Western Mediterranean route refers to irregular arrivals in Spain, either by crossing the Mediterranean to reach mainland Spain or by the land route to reach the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa. This migration route recorded more than 2,300 deaths.
The issue of immigrants will again be on the agenda of a European Union (EU) summit scheduled for March 23, after Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni sent a letter asking for the topic to be raised at the meeting. to introduce. said a spokesman for the European Council on Wednesday.
Source: DN
