There is a new line of investigations linked to theemergency landings in our country and probable human trafficking: Italian investigators would be checking some profiles on TikTok looking for videos that could confirm the attacks by groups of pirates on boats crossing the Sicilian channel.
The aim would be to rob these people of the little money they have with them, perhaps some mobile phones and above all the engines of the small boats, which then remain adrift in the Mediterranean.
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Military type boarding techniques
After the second precautionary custody order issued by the Agrigento prosecutor’s office, which he took to his cell on Thursday 6 Tunisian citizens aged between 28 and 52 yearsall accused of international piracy, under scrutiny by the Police and Finance Mobile team, some clips would have ended up on the well-known Chinese social network that would show “evidence of predatory conduct”as explained.
Give one Tunisian accountof which we were unable to find a trace but which according to investigative sources has “a few hundred followers and a series of contents concerning migrations by sea to Italy”, a few seconds long video was allegedly published which would show a small boat of iron of 6-8 meters with 30-40 people on board undergoes an encirclement maneuver by two fishing vessels, despite attempts to resist. Militia techniques with cross boarding from bow and stern, cutting off the punt’s course and then passing at close range, while the crew mimics the gesture of stopping.
Also reportedly, from the profile it would be possible to trace other accounts on other social networks, such as Instagram and Facebook, which publish similar videos, but where it would be difficult to distinguish whether they are really assaults in the waves or if it is not the traditional technique of the mother ship that escorts boats and dinghies towing them to the borders of Italian waters and then letting them go towards the coasts . Or both. In a scenario where the trafficker which helps to make a trip to Europe and the pirate who robs the victims can be the same person at different times.
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Information difficult to verify
It is true that on TikTok there are actually quite a few videos dedicated to the topic migrants, even crude and sometimes cruel, but the same investigators invite caution on the possibility of using as evidence these contents, published by users whose real identity is unknown: there are legal problems, dating and identification of the people involved. Of truthfulness, above all.
A suggest caution then there are some precedents in recent Italian judicial history, in which social networks have led to significant errors and mistaken identity, such as the famous case of General Mered, arrested in Sudan in a joint Italy-United Kingdom operation and tried in Palermowho allegedly headed the trafficking of men from Eritrea.
Searching the Net for information on traffickers and pirates in Tunisia and the Maghreb is an activity more of intelligence than of judicial police but it is nonetheless a road that can be “attended to”, as they say in the jargon, perhaps to reconstruct networks of people and ships flying the Tunisian flag returning to the scene.
For investigative purposes, on the other hand, i are probably useless comments in Arabic under the postswhich however reflect the contradictory sensitivity of citizens and public opinion in the Maghreb with respect to the presumed, renewed centrality of Tunisia in the trafficking of human beings from the sub Sahara: there are those who invoke Allah, who “may protect them and get them safely ”, who questions the technical characteristics of the boats and those who openly speak of “death boats made of iron”.