Migrant boat captain charged with multiple manslaughter

ITALIAN prosecutors have charged a Tunisian captain of an overcrowded migrant boat that sunk off the Libyan coast with multiple manslaughter.

The captain of the vessel and a Syrian, allegedly a member of the ship’s crew, were taken from a group of 27 survivors who arrived in the Sicilian port of Catania on Monday evening, Al Jazeera reported.

“We carried out two arrest warrants of suspected traffickers, the captain of the ship that capsized and a member of the crew.

We charged them both with facilitating illegal immigration and the captain was also to be charged with multiple manslaughter,” prosecutor Rocco Liguori said.

The charges were announced as more details emerged of the fatal incident. 

Giovanni Salvi, another Italian prosecutor, said: “The migrants were crushed inside this fishing boat … A few hundred migrants were forced into the hold, at the lowest level, and they were locked in and prevented from coming out.

Another several hundred were closed into the second level, while on the top, under a cover, there were another hundred migrants.

The Italian coastguard managed to retrieve 24 bodies from the water near the island of Malta but the vast majority went down with the sunken boat.

We can say that 800 are dead,” Carlotta Sami, spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy, said yesterday, citing the survivors’ accounts of the deadly crossing.

Those who escaped with their lives described to officials the moment the trawler carrying them capsized after a Portuguese merchant ship approached the vessel, causing a stampede.

“There were a little over 800 people on board, including children aged between 10 and 12.