CAIRO: The head of the Suez Canal Authority on Thursday said that losses and damages resulting from the grounding of the Ever Given container ship could run to more than $1 billion.
Osama Rabie told media that investigations into the incident, which resulted in the vital trade waterway being blocked to shipping for nearly a week, had begun on Wednesday.
The ship’s black box recorder would reveal details of how the giant vessel – successfully refloated on Monday – ended up jammed sideways across the canal, he added.
Authorities said the backlog of hundreds of ships was clearing smoothly and that the Ever Given was currently undergoing checks while moored away from the main Suez navigation channel.
Rabie pointed out that the Ever Given would be allowed to continue its voyage when compensation had been agreed, but he warned that the vessel would be held if a settlement could not be reached. “The ship carries goods worth $3.5 billion. There was cooperation from the company that owns the ship during the crisis,” he said.
He noted that the probe into the international shipping crisis was being conducted by a team that included marine, legal, loss assessment, and engineering experts while predicting that Egyptian compensation claims could be in excess of $1 billion.
The blockage held up billions of dollars in global trade each day the canal was closed. On Monday, 1,134 ships passed through the Suez and another 81 on Tuesday, with the largest container vessels given priority passage.
According to Rabie, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi had directed that incentives be granted in the form of a 5 percent to 15 percent reduction for ships affected by the incident.
“President El-Sisi spoke to me every day to follow up the latest developments in the grounded ship issue. At dawn on Monday, the president announced the movement of the ship,” he added.
The 800 workers involved in the tricky operation to refloat the Ever Given are to receive bonuses and El-Sisi also pledged to organize a celebration ceremony for them.
Global credit rating agency DBRS Morningstar said that total losses covered by insurance would not be overly excessive due to the relatively short period the ship was stuck in the canal, adding that most insurance contracts set a maximum amount of coverage.
Egypt’s claims bill for Ever Given ship’s Suez blockage may hit $1bn: Canal authorities
https://arab.news/v2ja9
Egypt’s claims bill for Ever Given ship’s Suez blockage may hit $1bn: Canal authorities
Tunisia court frees NGO workers accused of helping migrants
- Mahmoud Daoud Yaacoub, a member of Riahi’s defense team, told AFP that the court had handed down a two-year suspended sentence to the defendants who were in pre-trial detention
TUNIS: A Tunisian court has freed a group of humanitarian workers after handing them suspended sentences for facilitating the “illegal entry and residence” of migrants, a support committee said on Tuesday.
Sherifa Riahi, the former director of the French NGO Terre d’Asile, and several members of her staff had already spent more than 20 months in jail by the time of their final hearing on Monday.
Hours after the hearing, Riahi’s support committee posted a video of her leaving prison overnight, announcing her colleagues had also been freed.
Mahmoud Daoud Yaacoub, a member of Riahi’s defense team, told AFP that the court had handed down a two-year suspended sentence to the defendants who were in pre-trial detention.
“Tomorrow we will learn the rest of the judgment regarding the defendants who are out on bail,” he said.
The NGO employees were accused alongside 17 municipal workers from the eastern city of Sousse who were implicated for having lent premises to the organization.
The 23 defendants, who were also charged with “conspiracy with the aim of housing or hiding people who entered clandestinely,” had faced up to 10 years in prison.
Other charges, including ones alleging financial misdeeds, were previously dropped.
The defendants’ lawyers had argued they were simply carrying out humanitarian work under a state-approved program, in coordination with the government.
On the last day of the trial on Monday, a handful of people gathered outside the courthouse in support of the defendants. The final hearing lasted all day and as night fell, the court retired to consider the verdict.
The UN special rapporteur for human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, had on Sunday urged “the authorities to release her (Riahi) instead of trying her on dubious charges related to her defense of migrant rights.”
Migration is a sensitive issue in Tunisia, a key transit point for tens of thousands of people seeking to reach Europe each year.
The defendants were arrested in May 2024 along with about a dozen humanitarian workers, including anti-racism pioneer Saadia Mosbah, whose trial is to start later this month.
In February 2023, President Kais Saied said “hordes of illegal migrants,” many from sub-Saharan Africa, posed a demographic threat to the Arab-majority country.
His speech triggered a series of racially motivated attacks as thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia were pushed out of their homes and jobs.
Thousands were repatriated or attempted to cross the Mediterranean, while others were expelled to the desert borders with Algeria and Libya, where at least a hundred died that summer.
This came as the European Union boosted efforts to curb arrivals on its southern shores, including a 255-million-euro ($290 million) deal with Tunis.
