The Crotona Prosecutor's Office, in Calabria, has opened an investigation into the operations carried out by the Coast Guard and different security forces in the hours before the terrible shipwreck, on Sunday, of a migrant boat off the beaches of Steccato di Cutro . The objective is to clarify whether the tragedy, in which at least 67 people died – the last body recovered is that of a child – could have been avoided. The feeling in Italy is that not enough was done to prevent the boat, coming from Turkey, from being safe from the storm that forced it to collide with a rock, ended up destroying it and expelling the 180 people traveling on it into the sea. her after paying about 8,000 euros for the trip to Europe.
Suspicions have increased after the head of the Crotona port captaincy, Vittorio Aloi, has acknowledged that in that state of the sea the Coast Guard could have intervened, contrary to what had been said until then. It all happened after Saturday night, at 10:23 p.m., a Frontex plane, the European agency that helps member states with border control, told the Italian authorities that it had sighted the vessel some 40 miles away. the Calabrian coasts. He only transmitted that the navigability was "good" and that, with a thermal photograph, it could be known that the interior of the ship was full of people. They also reported that there was a Turkish mobile, which was a sign that it could be a ship driven by traffickers.
Two hours later, when they had already entered Italian territorial waters, the Italian Guardia di Finanza – the customs police – moved two ships, which went out to sea twice to intercept it, but also without success because they were not adapted to the bad maritime conditions. Afterwards, and until the shipwreck had already occurred, there was no other operation.
"It turns out to us that on Sunday the sea had a force 4, but larger boats could have sailed with a sea of force 8", Aloi declared, in a few words that could confirm that more could have been done to try to save the lives of these people. "No alarm was communicated to us," he insisted, remarking that his body did everything indicated in the protocols.
Now, the Crotona prosecutor, Giuseppe Capoccia, wants to understand why the emergency device was only activated when the boat had already sunk, some 100 meters from the Calabrian coast. “Certainly we are seeing a system with gaps, in which, probably in good faith, everyone does their job, but which can result in tragic situations like this one,” the prosecutor told La Repubblica. Investigators are reconstructing service communications between Frontex, the Coast Guard and customs police looking for possible omissions and liabilities. “We will rebuild everything that happened, but I would be upset, as a citizen, if anything could have been done to save these people,” Capoccia said.
The matter has become a political storm in Italy, also due to the controversial statements by the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, who is very close to League member Matteo Salvini, who said that "desperation can never justify travel conditions that endanger the lives of their own children. "We await the result of the investigation, but from the point of view of political responsibility, his statements already require his resignation and a deep reflection by Meloni," criticized the new leader of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein. Other leftist parties joined this request.
The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, went to the city of Crotona this Thursday to pay tribute to the 67 deceased and visit the sports center where the coffins have been placed. Mattarella is the only high official of the Italian State who has gone to the funeral chapel and has met with relatives of the victims, a presence that contrasts with the absence of the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, who was on an official visit to India.
