The hour of reckoning has come. Nine Egyptians, suspected of being smugglers involved in the sinking of a migrant boat off the coast of Greece that left at least 82 dead and hundreds missing, have been charged with “illegal trafficking” in human beings and remanded in custody, we learned on Tuesday from a Greek judicial source.
The nine men, survivors of this tragedy which could have caused hundreds of victims, were arrested last Thursday in Kalamata, a port in southwestern Greece where the 104 survivors of this shipwreck, one of the worst occurred in the eastern Mediterranean in recent years.
Aged between 20 and 40, they are also being prosecuted for having formed “a criminal organization” and for “negligent homicide”. They face a life prison sentence, according to Greek law.
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During their appearance of more than 10 hours on Tuesday before an investigating judge in Kalamata (southwest), they all denied the charges, according to the same source. The deadly shipwreck, presented as one of the most serious involving migrants in the Mediterranean, took place on the night of June 13 to 14, 47 nautical miles (87 km) off the coast of the Peloponnese peninsula, in the international waters, according to the Greek Coast Guard.
A navy frigate, a patrol boat and four other boats searched the area all day Tuesday for the seventh consecutive day, authorities said, but hopes of finding any survivors are near zero.
Seventy-eight bodies were recovered at sea the day after the sinking. Three more were discovered in the area of the sinking on Monday, then another on Tuesday, bringing the death toll to at least 82.
Between 400 and 750 passengers
According to testimonies of survivors, hundreds of people were on board this old and overloaded fishing boat which had sailed from Libya bound for Italy.
The World Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimate that between 400 and 750 passengers were on the trawler, including women and children. According to a tally by the Greek authorities, among the survivors are 47 Syrians, 43 Egyptians, 12 Pakistanis and two Palestinians.
The circumstances of the sinking raised many questions. The Greek coastguards are singled out by survivors and NGOs, in particular because they had spotted the boat since Tuesday but did not intervene until early Wednesday morning when the boat capsized and sank.
The Greek authorities, on the defensive, repeated that the migrants had refused any help but NGOs assured that the authorities should have intervened even in the event of refusal because the boat, overloaded, was in distress.
UN calls for investigation
In addition to an investigation opened by the Greek authorities, the United Nations has requested an investigation. “We do not know the precise conditions of this horrible incident (…) which comes on top of the growing number of deaths in the Mediterranean”, lamented Tuesday in Geneva Shabia Mantoo, spokesperson for the High Commissioner for Refugees.
But the IOM said it “fears that hundreds more people” have drowned “in one of the most devastating tragedies in the Mediterranean in a decade”.
The Greek Supreme Court has ordered an investigation to determine the causes of the tragedy that has shocked Greece, accused for years by NGOs and international media of turning back migrants seeking asylum in the EU.
The sinking occurred in the Ionian Sea, off Pylos, one of the deepest areas in the Mediterranean. Many relatives of alleged victims, refugees in various European countries, have arrived in Greece in recent days, in a desperate search for information.