WORLD_ Italy Arrests Captain and Crew Member of Capsized Migrant Boat

The New York Times

Italy Arrests Captain and Crew Member of Capsized Migrant Boat

By DAN BILEFSKY
APRIL 21, 2015

LONDON — The Italian authorities have arrested the Tunisian captain and a Syrian member of the crew of the boat that sank off the Libyan coast this weekend, news reports said, as Europe struggled to come up with a response to the increasing number of migrants desperately seeking refuge in Europe.

Citing prosecutors in Sicily, The Associated Press said that the captain was charged with multiple homicide, and that both men have been charged with engaging in illegal migration. The two were arrested while on board the rescue boat that brought more than two dozen survivors to the Sicilian port city of Catania on Monday night, The A.P. said.

News reports, citing the United Nations refugee agency, said that as many as 800 migrants may have died. A Bangladeshi survivor told the authorities that many of the victims of the shipwreck had been locked by smugglers in a hold on the lower deck.

The episode has highlighted the growing humanitarian crisis, and the European Council president, Donald Tusk, has called for a European summit meeting to be held on Thursday to address the issue. Surging numbers of refugees have been trying to reach Europe as the weather improves, often traveling in rickety boats operated by ruthless smugglers. Many never make it.

Prosecutors in Italy are investigating what ultimately caused the sinking, including whether the vessel capsized after the migrants rushed to one side of the ship.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy, whose country is on the front line of the crisis, has equated the brutal trafficking of migrants to the slave trade. “When we say we are in the presence of slavery, we are not using the word just for effect,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.

In response to the humanitarian crisis, the European Union has proposed several preventive measures, including doubling the size of its search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean; strengthening the financial resources of the bloc’s border agency, Frontex; and ratcheting up the fight against illegal smugglers.

The European Union is also seeking to unify its migration policies, including fingerprinting and recording all migrants and streamlining the application process for asylum.

Those efforts, however, face many challenges at a time when finances in many European Union members are strained and far-right parties across Europe have gained traction, in part by tapping into fear and resentment of immigrants.

The sinking of the ship has also shone a light on how Libya, unstable and shaken by violence, has become a center for human traffickers. In Rome on Monday, the prime ministers of Italy and Malta called for nonmilitary intervention against smugglers in Libya.

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