5 arrested for deaths of migrants on capsized boat
Print Edition
ITALIAN police yesterday arrested five North African men on suspicion of multiple homicide and human trafficking in the presumed drowning of more than 200 people.
Most of the dead were locked in the hold of a boat that sank off the coast of Libya on Wednesday.
Police said many children were believed to be among those who perished.
Two Libyans, two Algerians and a Tunisian ranging in age from 21 to 24, were placed under formal arrest in Palermo after being questioned on Thursday. Police had earlier mistakenly identified the Tunisian as a Libyan.
The accused men charged the migrants between US$1,200 and US$1,800 for the voyage, depending on where they would be placed on the deck of the boat. Those in the hold paid about half as much as those above, police said.
The boat was carrying about 650 people. Italian and Irish ships rescued more than 400 migrants and recovered 26 bodies, including three children. Police arrested the men after speaking to survivors the night after they arrived in Palermo.
“The arrested are suspected of causing the confirmed deaths of 26 migrants and the presumed deaths of about 200 people who, according to witnesses, were locked in the hold of the boat that capsized,” a police statement said.
About three hours into the journey from Libya the boat started taking on water in the hold, which was full of mostly African migrants, police said.
The traffickers ordered them to bail out the water but they were unable to do so and tried to break out of the hold. They were beaten back with knives, clubs and belts.
The traffickers marked the heads of migrants who disobeyed orders with knife cuts, particularly the sub-Saharan Africans. Arab migrants were mostly beaten with belts.
The migrants drowned when the boat capsized, police said.
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