behind migrant deaths to get away with it
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt –
At around 2 a.m. on Saturday, April 9, a large blue fishing boat carrying
hundreds of African migrants and their children capsized just off the coast of
Egypt.
Some drowned
quickly. Others thrashed in the water, yelling for help in Arabic, Somali or
Afan Oromo. The few with lifejackets blew whistles that pierced through the
shrieks.
A solitary electric
torch probed the moonless darkness. It came from a smaller boat that was
circling, tantalisingly close. The men on that boat, the people-smugglers who
had brought their human cargo to this point, were searching only for their
comrades. They ignored the screams of the migrants and beat some back into the
water.
Just 10 migrants
managed to scramble up into the smaller boat to join the smugglers and 27 other
migrants already aboard.
CLICK IMAGE TO ZOOM OUT
Around 500 adults
and children died on the voyage, according to survivor and official estimates,
the largest loss of life in the Mediterranean in 2016. Among the dead were an
estimated 190 Somalis, around 150 Ethiopians, 80 Egyptians, and some 85 people
from Sudan, Syria and other countries. Thirty-seven migrants survived.
Awale Sandhool, a
23-year-old who worked at a radio station in Mogadishu and had fled death
threats at home, was among the few who swam to safety. Amid the chaos of the
sinking, he said, his childhood friend Bilal Milyare had shouted to him from
the water before drowning: “Could we not have been saved?”
Until now, no one
has tried to answer that question.
A Reuters investigation
in collaboration with BBC Newsnight has found that in the seven months since
the mass drowning, no official body, national or multinational, has held anyone
to account for the deaths or even opened an inquiry into the shipwreck.
When the news
emerged via social media eight days after the sinking, European politicians
showed brief interest. Italian President Sergio Mattarella suggested that the
world should reflect on “yet another tragedy in the Mediterranean.”
But Italy, where the
ship was headed, has not investigated the sinking. Nor has Greece, where the
survivors landed, or Egypt, from where the migrants and smugglers set sail.
There has been no investigation by any United Nations body, the European
Union’s frontier agency, the EU police agency, any maritime agency, the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, or the EU naval task force in the Mediterranean.
The only significant
official action taken so far has been a fraud case against some of the
smugglers in Egypt, sparked by complaints to police by a handful of grieving
parents. No one has been apprehended in that case.
Reuters has
identified the owners of the doomed ship and the ringleaders of the voyage, as
well as the people-brokers who assembled the migrants in Cairo and Alexandria
and took their money.
The investigation
demonstrates the gaps in international law enforcement that make it easy for
human smugglers to pursue their deadly trade in the Mediterranean. But it also
shows what could be done if authorities chose to make a priority of investigating
migrant deaths.
The official
indifference to the disaster contrasts with how nations mobilised after
EgyptAir Flight MS804 crashed in the Mediterranean on May 19, killing 66
people. Within hours of the crash, Egypt dispatched warships and air force
planes to search for wreckage and survivors. France, Britain and the United
States sent their own ships and aircraft. An investigation into what caused the
crash and who was responsible continues in both Egypt and France.
Rob Wainwright,
director of the European police agency, Europol, said that in hindsight his
agency should have investigated the April sinking. Reuters inquiries might have
exposed a “gap here in the collective response by Europe” to such cases, he
said in an interview.
He said the news agency’s
inquiries had “triggered our minds about how we can improve.” In late November
he said that Europol would study evidence collected by Reuters with BBC
Newsnight – and would consider opening an inquiry into the case, together with
Greece or another member state. “If we can find a way of expediting it and
making it operational then we will try to do that.”
In Egypt, Judge
Khaled al-Nashar, assistant to Egypt’s Minister of Justice for Parliamentary
and Media Affairs, said he could not confirm what inquiries had taken place
into the April sinking but further action was not ruled out. “If the occurrence
of such a crime is proven, Egypt certainly will not hesitate to conduct the
necessary investigations to uncover it and arrest the perpetrators and bring
them to justice.”
Egypt’s special
ambassador for migration, Naela Jabr, said security agencies were “doing their
utmost” to fight illegal migration, arresting 5,076 people who tried to migrate
illegally in the first six months of the year. Jabr said a people-smuggling law
passed by parliament in October and ratified in November would help in the
crackdown.
Some Egyptian
lawyers said the government already had the power to impose justice in the
case. They said that smugglers responsible for the voyage could be prosecuted
for first-degree homicide, abetting illegal migration, and maritime safety
breaches.
“I consider putting
500 people on this boat to be murder. There is no other way to describe it,”
said Sabry Tolba, an Egyptian lawyer hired by the families of some of those who
died.
The November 2000
Palermo Convention against organised crime, signed by all of the nations
involved in the tragedy, also requires countries to pass laws, take effective
measures and “cooperate to the fullest extent possible” to prevent and suppress
the smuggling of migrants by sea.
This account is
based on interviews with people involved in all aspects of the voyage:
survivors, relatives of the victims, smugglers, fishermen, coastal residents in
Egypt, security and maritime officials, agents who acted as the middlemen
between passengers and traffickers, and money changers who handled the cash.
Reuters also analysed social media networks to track the links between
smugglers and their human cargo.
Among the obstacles
that had to be overcome: Survivors, fearing repatriation to Egypt and
retaliation from the smuggler gangs, initially lied about key details of the
trip. Those lies, widely repeated by the media and by UN agencies, have helped
delay bringing the perpetrators to account.
THE PEOPLE MARKET
In the spring of
this year, crowds began gathering every day on Mekka el Mokrama Street in
Cairo, where the Egypt headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) is located. They were migrants, most of them from Somalia and
Ethiopia, queuing to register with UNHCR so they could temporarily but legally
live in Egypt.
On the street,
brokers circled.
“Italy, Italy,
Italy,” they shouted, as they hawked places on boats headed across the
Mediterranean.
Over the winter, few
boats had made that trip. But now the weather was clearing and the
people-smuggling business was picking up. By August, more than 11,379 migrants
would make it to Italy from Egypt, more than in all of 2015. The Mediterranean
would prove deadlier than ever. According to the UNHCR, more than 4,663 people
have died trying to cross the sea to Europe this year, a record.
One broker touting
passage was Hamza Abdirashid, a slim and well-dressed man whose Facebook
profile says he comes from the city of Hargeisa in the breakaway part of
Somalia known as Somaliland.
Sandhool, the young
Somali from Mogadishu, met him in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City, where Somali
migrants often congregate. “He came around in a car and asked me if I wanted to
go to Europe,” Sandhool said.
The price was
$1,800, Sandhool said. But “Hamza was saying if you take five people along, you
will get two for free.” Sandhool said he later negotiated a $500 discount for
himself with one of Abdirashid’s deputies, another Somali in Cairo.
Brokers charged
passengers a fee of between $1,300 and $2,500, based on the traveller’s ability
to pay, according to more than a dozen survivors interviewed. People involved
in the business said the broker typically kept $200 of that, passing on the
rest to the smugglers.
Several other
migrants identified Abdirashid as the main broker for Somalis on the April
voyage. Other brokers handled other nationalities. The middlemen usually come
from the same ethnic group as the migrants.
The brokers used
messaging on apps like Facebook, WhatsApp and Viber to negotiate with migrants.
Records of those interactions could help law enforcement identify the brokers.
An analysis of the Facebook friends of Abdirashid, the broker, shows he was
connected to at least 10 of those Somalis on board the ship: six victims and
four survivors.
Contacted on social
media, Abdirashid declined to comment about his role as a broker, saying that
the issue of illegal migration was sensitive.
“I’m a student, I
don’t want to face problems,” he wrote in a WhatsApp conversation with a
reporter.
GOING DOWN
In the evening of
Thursday, April 7, a fleet of minibuses moved through the suburbs of Cairo,
picking up Somalis and Ethiopians from lay-bys and street corners.
The buses were
tourist vehicles, hired from a Giza-based company called Honest Tours, said one
broker. Emad Monir, transport director of the company, said he was unaware of
this trip or any other involving illegal migrants. “It is like stopping a taxi
on the street, the driver doesn’t ask the client why is he going to the place.”
The buses carried
the migrants for three hours to the port city of Alexandria.
Sandhool and his
fellow travellers were handed to another group of Egyptian smugglers who would
earn around $220 a head. For that, the smugglers put migrants temporarily in
takhzeen, or storage – apartment buildings in Alexandria or isolated compounds
close to the shore. They also took care of el Nazla, or going down, shifting
the migrants into waiting boats.
It was at this stage
that the first known deaths occurred.
At dawn on Friday,
April 8, after a night waiting in isolated car parks with curtains drawn, a
group of Somalis and Ethiopians were offloaded from buses on Alexandria’s Miami
Beach. The beach is a tourist destination and is typically thronged with
pleasure-seekers.
It is also fenced
off and usually protected by guards. But no guard was visible that day and
nobody intervened when smugglers armed with pistols assembled the migrants into
groups of 20 or 30 and loaded them onto hasakas, the small wooden boats with
engines that ply this part of the coast.
“Everyone was being
grabbed and thrown on. People were sitting on top of me and I felt a lot of
pressure,” said Sandhool. “Then the boat started moving.”
Read full article at REUTERS
Follow Solenzo Blog on
0 Comments