ROME: Italian prosecutors investigating a deadly shipwreck which killed 94 migrants in 2023 accused two members of the coast guard and four police officers Tuesday of involuntary manslaughter.
Prosecutors in Crotone, a city near the shipwreck off southern Italy, must now ask a judge to rule whether the six stand trial for the tragedy.
The victims, including many children, perished when their overcrowded boat sank in stormy dawn weather just off the region of Calabria.
The disaster sparked outrage amid allegations authorities did not react quickly enough to reports of an overloaded vessel in the area.
Critics of far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the government’s policy of treating migrant boats as a law enforcement issue, rather than a humanitarian one, may have fatally delayed the rescue.
European Union border agency Frontex flagged the vessel to the Italians late in the evening as the weather worsened.
The four financial police officers stand accused of failing to communicate key information to the coast guard, because they did not mention the difficulties they were having in sailing due to the difficult sea conditions, prosecutors said in a statement Tuesday.
The two members of the coast guard are accused of “not having acquired the necessary information to have a precise idea” of what the financial police were up to and of having therefore made “an erroneous assessment” of the situation.
The prosecutors said coast guard vessels, designed for rough seas, could have intervened.
The coast guard is supposed to rescue all vessels carrying migrants, as boats run by human traffickers are inevitably dangerously overcrowded and ill-equipped.
There was “obvious negligence in the application of the rules imposed by European and national laws in this type of situation,” the prosecutors said.
Italy prosecutors accuse six over 2023 migrant shipwreck
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Italy prosecutors accuse six over 2023 migrant shipwreck
- Prosecutors in Crotone, a city near the shipwreck off southern Italy, must now ask a judge to rule whether the six stand trial for the tragedy
- The disaster sparked outrage amid allegations authorities did not react quickly enough to reports of an overloaded vessel in the area
Greek coast guard search for 15 after migrant boat found adrift
- The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water
ATHENS: Greek coast guard were on Monday searching for 15 people who fell into the water from a migrant boat that was found drifting off the coast of Crete with 17 bodies on board.
The 17 fatalities, all of them men, were discovered on Saturday on the craft, which was taking on water and partially deflated, some 26 nautical miles (48 kilometers) southwest of the island.
Post-mortem examinations were being carried out to determine how they died but Greek public television channel ERT suggested they may have suffered from hypothermia or dehydration.
A Greek coast guard spokeswoman told AFP that two survivors reported that “15 people fell in the water” after the motor cut out on Thursday, then the vessel drifted for two days.
At the time, Crete and much of the rest of Greece was battered by heavy rain and storms.
The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water.
The vessel had 34 people on board and had left the Libyan port of Tobruk on Wednesday, the Greek port authorities said. Most of those who died came from Sudan and Egypt.
It was initially spotted by a Turkish-flagged cargo ship on Saturday, triggering a search that included ships and aircraft from the Greek coast guard and the European Union border agency Frontex.
Migrants have been trying to reach Crete from Libya for the last year, as a way of entering the European Union. But the Mediterranean crossing is perilous.
In Brussels, the EU’s 27 members on Monday backed a significant tightening of immigration policy, including the concept of returning failed asylum-seekers to “return hubs” outside the bloc.
The UN refugee agency said more than 16,770 asylum seekers in the EU have arrived on Crete since the start of the year — more than any other island in the Aegean Sea.
Greece’s conservative government has also toughened its migration policy, suspending asylum claims for three months, particularly those coming to Crete from Libya.
