To Agrigento it is invasion migrants. There are 400 Tunisian non-EU citizens who came to the beach of Palma di Montechiaro in the early afternoon today. A real chaos that triggered the alarm in no time. An impressive landing that leaves room for all the conditions of an arrival with a “mother ship”. In fact, there is no trace of boats on the shoreline, therefore, it is thought of a vehicle that left migrants in the water a few meters away from the shore and then disappeared. On the spot immediately the police to stop and identify the arrivals in compliance with all security measures.
At sea the patrol boats of the Capitata di Licata and Porto Empedocle and also the patrol of the finance guard. Instead, in the skies the police helicopter to track down the mother ship and also the migrants who managed to escape once they landed on dry land. A real chaos that is keeping men in uniform engaged but that is also generating alert in the City of the Leopard and in the provincial territory. In fact, several non-EU citizens have already been reported on the state road leading to Agrigento. A landing of this magnitude has not been seen since 2017, a year characterized by the imposing arrival of ghost landings on the coasts of Agrigento.
It is a hot weekend for Sicily if you consider that that of Palma di Montechiaro is not the only coast to have been affected by landings. Also this afternoon, in fact, another boat arrived in Linosa with 52 migrants on board, another vehicle was intercepted off the coast of Lampedusa and other arrivals were recorded in Trapani. In the latter case, there are three boats. But also yesterday evening new arrivals were registered on the island of Lampedusa with two different boats. The first, with five Tunisians on board, arrived directly on the Favarolo pier. The second, with another 40 Tunisians on board, was intercepted offshore by the finance guard and escorted to the pier.
It is a real invasion that is generating alarm among the populations concerned but also among the local administrators. A situation at the limits of manageability seen and considered both the excessive number of migrants and the health emergency that requires social distancing and respect for the quarantine. Where will the new arrivals be transferred now? The quarantine ship located in the harbor, in Porto Empedocle, is no longer enough and now the problem of managing arrivals has become a reality. And regarding this new and massive wave of arrivals, Parliamentarians of the League Stefano Candiani and Nicola Molteni, undersecretaries of the Interior with Minister Salvini, attributed the responsibility for what happened to the government. ” Record of landings in a day, with more than 400 arrivals. Fault of the Government and the wicked maxi amnesty of Bellanova and the 5Stelle– reads in a note from the Northern League which continues – Italy returns to be the refugee camp of Europe: in 2020 there are 4,445 landings from January 1 to May 22, against 1,361 in the same period of 2019. Ports and doors open to illegal immigrants by those who want to dismantle the Security decrees“.
The maxi landing that took place in Palma di Montechiaro has once again raised the issue of the possible use of mother ships by human traffickers. A latter technique that, over the years, has often been in the spotlight by investigators above all.
But what does the mother ship? It is a boat to which other smaller vehicles are usually attached, which are then unhooked and diverted to the Sicilian coasts and the various landing points. Most of the time these are fishing boats that, starting from the other side of the Mediterranean, then travel a good part of the journey together with the rafts and boats with migrants on board. Once the small boats have been released, the smugglers on board the mother ship reverse and return to Tunisia or Libya. Ever since the migration phenomenon became more intense in the early 2000s, there has always been strong suspicion of the use of mother ships by criminal organizations. But it is only after the black year of 2017, that is, where in the province of Agrigento there were at least two landings per day in the summer, the spotlights on this mode used by human traffickers.
A striking proof of the use of mother ships, was for example in November 2018. On that occasion, a Frontex mission plane spotted a suspected fishing vessel not far from Lampedusa. It looked like a boat like many others, on board in fact there are no gatherings of migrants. However, a rope tied this boat with a small boat, also apparently empty. The Frontex vehicle therefore noted that, right near Lampedusa, the fishing boat left the small boat attached to it adrift.
Once the controls were taken, it turned out that 68 people were inside that small vehicle left adrift. They were all crammed in the hold, so no one had spotted their presence from above. The fishing boat, which then acted as a mother ship, instead fled to Tunisia. The result was a chase that on November 22 2018 also involved vehicles of the Coast Guard and the Guardia di Finanza. In the end, the six smugglers on board that fishing vessel were arrested a few miles from Tunisian waters. The Agrigento prosecutor’s office, which coordinated those investigations, spoke of the first real tangible evidence of the use of a mother ship by criminals who make money with the journeys of hope. In June 2019, another one left from Agrigento similar operation: also in that case, a mother ship was sighted not far from the Italian waters and the smugglers on board were arrested.
The use of mother ships by criminal organizations it is therefore now a consolidated datum. And above all, an increasingly popular technique appears among traffickers. Moreover, the advantages for the latter are considerable. First of all, smugglers have the possibility to more easily find an escape route in international waters, therefore returning almost immediately to the port of departure in Libya or Tunisia. Secondly, the mother ship becomes a vehicle that can also be used for multiple crossings: in this way, the various criminal associations can sacrifice only small wooden boats. Another important aspect concerns the fact that the smugglers, thanks to the use of a mother ship, avoid going down with the migrants and then being later identified. This is why there is a need to bet on the use by traffickers of increasingly important mother ships to bring migrants to our shores. The improvement in weather conditions, the approach to the summer months and the use of larger boats from which to launch the boats headed for Sicily, are all elements that cause fear of hot weeks on the migratory front.
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