New data on the tragedy of the fishing boat loaded with emigrants, sunk three mornings ago near Greek waters, place the responsibility on Egyptian criminal networks. Nine human smugglers of this nationality, survivors of the shipwreck, are under arrest in Kalamata, where one of them is still recovering, along with dozens of survivors. It has also been revealed that the ship, overloaded to chilling limits, had actually left a port in Egypt, although it put out to sea on Monday after calling at Tobruk, in eastern Libya.
This has not prevented criticism of the European and Greek authorities, who did not know or were unable to prevent the catastrophe, despite the fact that Frontex had been monitoring the trajectory of the ship since midday and a Greek coastal patrol followed it closely for several hours, albeit stroke of midnight
The Greek coast guard assures that before midnight they arrived to moor the fishing boat, to drag it to the coast of Greece, but that elements on board rebelled and even cut the rope, something that could constitute a crime of homicide. Some, out of desperation, because they believed they had paid a "passage" to Italy for five thousand euros on average. Others, for fear of the weight of the law. Two hours later, the fishing boat was listing dangerously to one side -perhaps due to a panic movement among the passengers- and ten minutes later she sank. Along the way, some desperate calls to entities that from Europe work to promote the rescues.
Given the dimension of the drama, with few precedents in Greece - 78 corpses rescued and at least three hundred more at the bottom of the sea - yesterday, Thursday, there were protest demonstrations in some Greek cities due to the presumed passivity of their authorities - there are elections in Greece at end of the month - who claim instead that their offers of help were rejected by traffickers and undocumented migrants. These are mostly men of working age, although some witnesses say there could be as many as a hundred women and children in the holds, out of a total number of passengers ranging from four to six hundred, according to the sources.
Illegal immigration has avoided Greece lately, due to the greater control in the refugee camps and the increase in deportations and knowing the greater difficulties, in any case, to reach the heart of Europe through the Balkans. Something that has led to the establishment of increasingly long and dangerous routes, with ever larger ships, but with deliberately limited water and food, to try to reach the Italian mainland coast in dramatic situations, directly from eastern Libya -instead of from the west, nearest- or Lebanon.
Many of the survivors of the shipwreck, who were trying to enter the European Union illegally, were being taken this morning by buses from Kalamata to the Malakasa detention camp, near Athens. The Hellenic government assures that the asylum applications that are presented will be examined and that those who do not meet the requirements -predictably the vast majority, since there is no war in Egypt or Pakistan and the weapons have fallen silent in Libya or Syria- will be deported.
The search work continues this Friday in the waters of the Ionian Sea. It is one of the deepest areas in the entire Mediterranean, five kilometers from the surface, where hundreds of corpses have been lying since Tuesday. Their recovery is next to impossible and even their number and identity may never be determined.
Whoever has such data, however, will have pocketed up to three million euros anyway. An allegedly Egyptian serial killer -but with necessary complicity in Europe- who will continue to play with the lives of others as long as the chances of success justify the bet.
The economic situation in the countries of origin of these illegal immigrants is bad, although personally they are never among the most desperate. In Egypt, as is known, democracy was aborted, while in both Libya and Syria the state has been fragmented and to a large extent scrapped by internal and external actors, in no hurry to promote its reconstruction.
The overloading of the shells is not pure greed, but the result of a perverse calculation that takes into account the humanitarian response of the other party. In fact, the Greek authorities estimate that the operation in question had been brewing "between 40 and 50 days." Whether they arrive in the European Union or are deported or end up at the bottom of the sea, they all paid in advance. Many of them, after contacting through social networks.
The captain of the ship - whose engine stopped working shortly before the capsize - would have died or would have managed to camouflage himself among the rest of the passengers. The alleged smugglers and crew members who have been captured, all of them Egyptians between the ages of 20 and 40, have been accused by the Kalamata prosecutor of forming a criminal organization dedicated to the smuggling of irregular migrants, causing a shipwreck and endangering lives. knowingly. They must appear before a judge in Athens next Monday.
It should be added that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jeremy Laurence, stressed this Friday "the need to investigate people smugglers and human traffickers to ensure that they are brought to justice." On the other hand, Laurence has called on states to "open more legal migration pathways" and to improve "shared responsibility" in the "safe and timely disembarkation of rescues." According to the UN, more than twenty thousand people have lost their lives trying to cross the central Mediterranean through illegal routes since the dismantling of the Libyan state, manu militari, in 2011.
