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OF THE CORRESPONDING OF CATANIA. Although there are no official confirmations, the boat with some sixty migrants adrift in the Maltese Sar area and of which Alarm Phone had said it had no news for two days, would be the same one reached yesterday by the “ghost” motor ship Dar Ar Salam 1, also known as Maria Christina and again as Mae Yemenaje, owned by Carmelo Grech, a businessman who has long been in relations with the Maltese government but also with Libyan circles. It is the same fishing boat that recovered 51 migrants and 5 corpses in Pasquetta (another seven missing persons) that drifted for days in the Sar area in Malta, taking them back to Tripoli and therefore implementing a ” rejection “, a refusal of refugees prohibited by international standards
The Valletta government has limited itself to announcing that from now on, since its ports are closed like the Italians due to the emergence of the coronavirus, the rescued migrants will be transferred at the expense of the EU in a ship that will remain anchored at 13 miles from the island, therefore, just outside the country’s territorial waters, until the EU takes over it, given that Malta has no more places to welcome migrants and that so far the promised relocations in The past through Brussels have never happened. The group of migrants, 57 apparently, was transferred from the fishing boat to this boat, the Europa II, which is part of the “Captain Morgan” fleet of large tourist boats that sail between the islands of the archipelago. We could say good news compared to the specter of a new rejection in Libya, where, according to IOM, the United Nations Organization for Migration, 3,200 migrants have been reported since the beginning of the year, the last 51 arrived today in Zawiya, among them 3 women and two children, and transferred to a detention center from where some immediately afterwards tried unsuccessfully to flee.
But in Malta, the case of the “setbacks” of migrants, recovered from anonymous ships on behalf of the country and brought back to Libya, is exploding. In these hours, a long article in the New York Times revealed that not only Dar Ar Salam 1 but at least two other fishing boats of the same type, “a flotilla of private boats”, as defined by the newspaper, would have secretly participated in similar clandestine operations. after receiving instructions from the Maltese Armed Forces (which also have Coast Guard duties among their duties) and long before the case of Easter Monday. On the other hand, in that episode on April 13, the Valletta prosecutor opened an investigation and already heard a person very close to the government, Neville Gafa, who admitted having participated in the coordination of that operation. Prime Minister Robert Abela would be investigated for a crime that can be assimilated to the omission of aid. In a statement, reported today by the Times of Malta, Abela admitted the episode on Easter Monday, nonetheless claiming that the use of private boats is legitimate, then specified that it was “a rescue of migrants” and therefore “not there was no rejection. ” “We are ready to do anything to save lives,” said the prime minister. We have nothing to be ashamed of.
