Migrants, the smuggler of the shipwreck in which the mother of a fourteen year old died

A 23-year-old young Guinean migrant was arrested by the Agrigento police and placed in custody for aiding illegal immigration but also for crimes of death as a result of another crime and manslaughter. The man, according to investigations by the prosecutor and the Agrigento mobile squad who heard numerous shipwrecked people in the hotspot of Lampedusa, would have been driving the small boat on which there were 26 migrants and which on the night of last December 17 overturned 18 miles off the coast of Lampedusa, causing all migrants to fall into the sea and the drowning of a young woman.

The migrants had just been joined by the patrol boats of the Italian Coast Guard and the Guardia di Finanza but in the excitement of the moment many migrants had moved to one side of the small boat, causing it to overturn. The men of the coastal Gardia threw themselves into the water to recover the castaways but for one of them there was nothing to do. The woman was accompanied by her 14-year-old son who saw his mother die on the patrol boat, where she was taken along with the survivors, despite the desperate attempts of the crew to revive her.

Those of mid-December were intense days of departures from Libya, rescues and landings. In those same hours, about 500 people had landed in Lampedusa. The Guinean was identified in the hotspot of the Imbriacola district and it was necessary for the investigators to gain the trust of the other occupants of the boat so that they eventually decided to collaborate and indicate him as the smuggler of that small boat. The man, after the confirmation of the arrest by the investigating judge of Agrigento, is now locked up in the city prison.

The Agrigento police headquarters also placed in custody three Egyptians aged 42 and 41 who had arrived in Lampedusa on 22 December along with 72 other migrants, almost all Bengali, with a boat that left Libya. In this case, investigators suspect that other smugglers, of Libyan nationality, who are still looking for each other are involved. The three Egyptians are accused of aiding illegal immigration. After validation by the investigating judge, they are now locked up in the Caltanissetta prison.