After the serious boat accident off the Greek coast, nine survivors have been arrested. They are said to have packed hundreds of people onto a rusty cutter that had sunk on its way to Italy.
A day after the heavy boat accident in the Mediterranean Sea with at least 78 dead, the Greek coast guard arrested nine survivors. They are said to have acted as smugglers. As the state radio (ERT) reported, the men from Egypt are accused, among other things, of forming a criminal organization. They are to be brought before the public prosecutor of the port city of Kalamata. This will decide how to proceed, it said.
It is feared that hundreds of migrants died when the fishing cutter went down around 50 nautical miles southwest of the Greek Peloponnese peninsula on Wednesday. The Coast Guard was able to save 104 people, 78 dead have been recovered so far. The rusty, 30 meter long fishing cutter seems to have dragged most of the victims down with it. In all, there may have been between 500 and 700 people on board, authorities said, citing interviews with survivors and estimates of the boat’s capacity.
Bodies are examined in Athens
The survivors are to be taken to a refugee camp near Athens by Friday. According to the Coast Guard, most passengers come from Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The recovered dead were brought to Athens on Thursday, where attempts are being made to identify the corpses using DNA samples, among other things.
According to the coast guard’s latest findings, the fishing boat left Egypt a few days ago, then stopped in Tobruk, Libya, and took on more people. The smugglers then set course for Italy. Migrants are said to have paid the organizers of the unfortunate boat between 5,000 and 6,000 euros per person.
Apparently mass panic on board
According to media reports, mass panic broke out on board when the engines of the old cutter failed. The overcrowded ship then lost its balance, capsized and sank immediately. Survivors said many of the passengers could not swim, and few wore life jackets. Also, the people below deck could not have escaped to the outside so quickly. Among them were many women and up to 100 children, it said.
The Greek coast guard and also passing freighters had repeatedly offered help to the crew of the boat by radio, said a spokesman for the authority. However, the crew rejected the offer on the grounds that they wanted to reach Italy. Because the boat was in international waters, officials were only able to intervene when the cutter got into distress and capsized on Wednesday night.
Numerous people were on the fishing boat, which later capsized and sank off southern Greece.
The EU border protection agency Frontex also knew about the endangered boat. His colleagues discovered the boat on Tuesday and reported it to the authorities, Frontex boss Hans Leijtens told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. He himself flew directly to Greece to clarify what exactly happened.
Scholz and Faeser are dismayed
Chancellor Olaf Scholz was dismayed by the accident. “It’s depressing and calls on us all to do everything we can to ensure that people don’t choose these dangerous escape routes,” said the SPD politician. He would like a solution with the help of a common and solidary “system of dealing” with migration in Europe.
Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) also took a stand: “We must not become numb in the face of this emergency, but must continue to work persistently to create legal migration routes and conclude migration agreements that respect human rights and the rule of law,” she said. If people came to Germany according to clear criteria, that would also destroy the smugglers’ business model.