The captain of a
ship full of migrants that capsized in the
Mediterranean Sea has been arrested on
suspicion of "reckless shipwreck, multiple
manslaughter (and)
abetting clandestine
immigration" for his role in a disaster that
left hundreds dead, an Italian
prosecutor's office said Tuesday.
Mohammed Ali Malek, the 27-year-old
captain from Tunisia, faces the same
prospective charges as one of his crew
members, 26-year-old Mahmud Bikhit of
Syria, according to a news release from
the prosecutor's office in the Sicilian city
of Catania.
Authorities there plan to ask a judge
Tuesday to keep both men jailed as the
case against them continues. A lawyer
has been appointed for the men and on
Friday a judge will hold a hearing and
listen to the accounts of five witnesses,
the prosecutor's office said.
Malek may have caused his ship's
capsizing late Saturday when he erred in
his navigation, leading his vessel to
collide with a merchant ship that had
come to help, according to the release
from the Catania office, which is headed
by prosecutor Giovanni Salvi.
That's one of two possible causes that
investigators have considered, the other
being that the migrant ship tipped over
after everyone ran to one side of it.
There's no indication that the King Jacob
cargo ship, which went to the aid of the
migrant boat, had anything to do with its
sinking. To the contrary, Salvi's office
said the vessel "dutifully provided relief
(and) did not contribute in any way to the
fatal event."
"Only the commander of the fishing
vessel and its crew are suspected of
causing the crime," the Catania
prosecutor's office said.
20-meter boat had about 850 aboard
This revelation comes hours after a U.N.
official said, based on accounts from
survivors, that the King Jacob could have
caused the other vessel's capsizing
either by touching it or by producing a
big wave that led it to tip roughly 70
miles (110 kilometers) north of Libya.
Those were two of three possibilities
outlined by Carlotta Asami, a
spokeswoman for the United Nations
refugee agency, to CNN early Tuesday.
The other was that the 20-meter (66-foot)
boat was simply overcrowded, with about
850 people packed aboard.
Mark Clark -- a communications
executive representing OSM Maritime
Group, the company that manages the
King Jacob -- denied the cargo ship
caused the migrant boat to capsize.
The cargo ship was going very slowly as
it approached, hardly making any waves
before deploying rescue boats, a
gangway, nets and life rings to help, he
told CNN.
The King Jacob, whose crew members
are all from the Philippines, ended up
saving 22 survivors, according to Clark.
Italian authorities have said that in all, 28
people were rescued.
That leaves hundreds more presumed
dead.
Locked in lower part of the ship,
survivor says
Dr. Giuseppe Pomilla, an Italian physician
working with the Knights of Malta, was
aboard the coast guard vessel that
rescued the migrants and described the
nightmarish scene.
"My colleague Enrico (a nurse) and I got
onto dinghies to find survivors," he said.
"What we saw, is terrible to say. It was a
carpet of bodies. We switched off the
engine of the dinghies and we heard
some terrific screams.
"We lighted some areas of the sea with
(spotlights). In the distance we saw a
man that was waving at us, asking for
help. We got close to him and got him on
board. He was really happy. We spoke
with him in English, we told him we were
Italian and that we were there to save
him. He told us we were his best friends.
"Then we saw another man -- we didn't
know if he was dead or alive. He was
staring to us from the sea, his eyes wide
open. He couldn't close his eyes, he
couldn't talk. He just grabbed our arm
and we got him on board. He still didn't
talk, and when we arrived on the
Gregoretti (the coast guard vessel) he
started crying."
About 24 bodies had been recovered as
of Monday. The vast majority of the
victims are believed to be still inside the
sunken boat.
Those who made it out alive were on all
on the highest part of the overcrowded
vessel. Italian authorities said Sunday
that an unidentified Bangladeshi survivor
had told them that smugglers had locked
many more people inside the lower
decks.
According to the Catania prosecutor's
office, these lower compartments flooded
immediately.
Francesco Rocca, the president of Italy's
Red Cross, said all of those rescued so
far were men, most of whom were in their
20s and 30s. They include one man from
Gambia, who is the lone survivor in a
group of about 80 of his countrymen.
"They are completely shocked," Rocca
said of the survivors.
"Our psychologists are working hard with
them," he added, describing it as a
tragedy many times over. "They lost a lot
of friends."
