- Title: EUROPE-MIGRANTS/SUSPECTS Five arrested in Sicily over migrant shipwreck deaths
- Date: 7th August 2015
- Summary: PALERMO, SICILY, ITALY (AUGUST 6, 2015) (REUTERS) IRISH NAVY SHIP LE NIAMH IN HARBOUR CARRYING SURVIVORS AND CASUALTIES OF SHIPWRECK FIVE SUSPECTS, LATER ARRESTED BY ITALIAN POLICE, BEING LET OFF THE SHIP IN THE FOLLOWING ORDER: IMAD BUSADIA, ABDULLAH ASSNUSI, SHAUKI ESSHAUSH, ALI SOUIBAH AND SUUD MUJASSABI VARIOUS OF COFFINS OF THE SHIPWRECK CASUALTIES BEING BROUGHT DOWN
- Embargoed: 22nd August 2015 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Italy
- Country: Italy
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA51KK5H9LVXCP41N1XLITCH1QH
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Italy arrested five North African men on Friday (August 7) on suspicion of multiple homicide and human trafficking in the presumed drowning of more than 200 people, saying they used clubs and knives against migrants.
Most of the dead were locked in the hold of a boat that sank off the coast of Libya on Wednesday (August 5). 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 (August 6). Police had earlier mistakenly identified the Tunisian as a Libyan.
The suspects were filmed disembarking from a ship in Palermo on Thursday.
Police said the accused men charged the migrants between $1,200 and $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, they added.
The boat was carrying some 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 during the night after they arrived in Palermo.
A police reconstruction based on witnesses' accounts said three of the men, part of a Libyan-based human trafficking ring, alternated steering the boat while the other two kept watch over the migrants.
More than 2,000 migrants and refugees have died so far this year trying to reach Europe by boat, compared with 3,279 during the whole of last year, the International Organization for Migration said.
Traffickers have sent more than 90,000 migrants by sea to Italy so far this year, the UN refugee agency says. Italy took in 170,000 in 2014. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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