Some of the Nigerian women who survived the Mediterranean shipwreck
Two men, one of them an Egyptian and the other a Libyan,have been
arrested and charged in Italy as investigators look into the deaths of
26 Nigerian women and girls,
who are suspected to have been murdered
while attempting to cross the Mediterranean.
The bodies of the women were brought to the southern Italian port of
Salerno by the Spanish ship Cantabria on Sunday, and prosecutors opened
an investigation over suspicions that the women, some as young as 14,
may have been abused and killed.
The bodies were recovered by Cantabria, which works as part of the
EU’s Sophia anti-trafficking operation, from two separate shipwrecks –
23 from one and three from the other. Fifty-three people are believed to
be missing.
The men arrested have been named as Al Mabrouc Wisam Harar, from Libya, and Egyptian Mohamed Ali Al Bouzid.
The pair are believed to have skippered one of the boats. They were
identified by survivors who were among the 375 brought to Salerno by
Cantabria.
An autopsy on the bodies should be completed over the next week.
Salerno prefect Salvatore Malfi told the Italian press that the women
had been travelling alongside men and when the vessels sank,
“unfortunately, the women suffered the worst of it.”
But in response to concerns that the women were being trafficked for
the sex trade, he added: “Sex trafficking routes are different, with
different dynamics used. Loading women on to a boat is too risky for the
traffickers, as they could risk losing all of their ‘goods’ – as they
like to call them – in one fell swoop.”
Marco Rotunno, an Italy spokesman for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR),
said his colleagues were at the port in Salerno when the bodies were
brought in.
“It was a very tough experience,” he said. “One lady from Nigeria lost all her three children.”
He added that 90% of migrant women arrive with bruises and other signs of violence.
“It’s very rare to find a woman who hasn’t been abused, only in
exceptional cases, maybe when they are travelling with their husband.
But also women travelling alone with their children have been abused.”
Most of the survivors were either Nigerian or from other sub-Saharan countries including Ghana, Sudan and Senegal.
The survivors brought to Tripoli also included Nigerians and Senegalese.
“I wanted to reach Italy. I don’t know what to do now,” said Dora
Omoruyi, a 23-year old arts student from Benin, Edo state, known as hub
for human traffickers to smuggle women to Italy where they often end up
as prostitutes.
“I see no future in Nigeria, there are no jobs,” she said, standing next to a group of weeping Nigerian survivors.
The survivors were among over 2,560 migrants saved over four days.
People still continue to attempt the crossing despite a pact between
Italy and Libya to stem the flow, which led to a drop in arrivals by
almost 70% since the summer, according to figures released last week by
Italy’s Interior Ministry.
Source:The Guardian
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