Three Arrested on Human Trafficking Charges After Deadly Migrant Shipwreck Off Italy

The Italian coast guard confirmed earlier that at least 63 migrants had died when a wooden boat believed to have been carrying around 200 people ended up shipwrecked near Crotone on February 26. The death toll is feared to exceed 100 people, with survivors claiming that migrants from Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan had been on board.

Three individuals have been arrested by police in Italy for allegedly engaging in human-trafficking as part of an investigation into the confirmed deaths of at least 64 migrants in a recent shipwreck off the country’s southern coast, according to media reports.

As the death toll from Sunday's tragedy is expected to further mount beyond 100, one Turkish man and two Pakistani nationals who navigated the wooden vessel with an estimated 200 migrants from from Izmir, Turkey, to Calabria, Italy, during inclement weather conditions have been taken into custody, a police spokesman was cited as saying.

The coast guard recovered another body on the beach at Steccato on February 28, according to a spokeswoman for the fire service, who added that it was still unclear how many migrants had been on the ill-fated vessel.

Previous reports suggested that around 200 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq and Iran had been crammed onto the boat that set sail sometime last week. However, the overcrowded vessel, struggling to weather the stormy sea conditions, broke up and sank on February 26.

Frontex border agency reportedly spotted the migrant-carrying vessel as it headed for Italy, but turbulent seas prevented its patrol boats from intercepting it.

According to the testimonies of the shipwreck survivors, “during the night, near the coast, they heard a loud boom, the boat broke and they all fell into the water.” Some described seeing "relatives fall into the water and disappear, or die”.

Eighty people were found alive, "including some who managed to reach the shore after the sinking", the coast guard stated. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry has since confirmed that 16 of its citizens survived the shipwreck, but four remained missing.

To date, some 12 minors are believed to have lost their lives in the disaster, while many were left orphaned. "They are heavily traumatized, some children have lost their whole family," Sergio Di Dato, from the charity Médecins Sans Frontières, was cited as saying.

Mourners have been paying their respects to the victims of the tragedy, as the coffins of those whose bodies had been retrieved were laid out in a sports hall in Crotone.

Victims of a migrants boat shipwreck lie in state in a sports centre where they were taken, in Crotone, southern Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023.

© AP Photo / Valeria Ferraro

In the wake of the shipwreck, Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni lashed out at the human traffickers, saying that "it is criminal to launch a boat just 20 meters long with 200 people on board in adverse weather." The only way to deal with the migrant issue "with humanity" was to stop such boat journeys, Meloni told local journalists. She added that she had written to the European Council and European Commission demanding swift action to prevent more deaths. "The more people depart, the more risk dying," she said.

Her sentiment was echoed by Italian President Sergio Mattarella, who called on the European Union to "finally take concrete responsibility for governing the phenomenon of migration in order to rescue it from human traffickers."

In 2022, over 100,000 refugees resorted to the so-called central Mediterranean route, known to be one of the world’s most dangerous, in order to enter Italy by boat.

"This is yet another tragedy happening near our shores. It reminds us all that the Mediterranean is a giant mass grave, with tens of thousands of souls in it, and it continues to widen... There is no end in sight; in 2013, people said 'never again' to the little white coffins of Lampedusa, in 2015, they said 'never again' in front of the lifeless body of a two-year-old Syrian child on a beach," Francesco Creazzo, from SOS Méditerranée, was cited as saying.