More on that ship full of refugees abandoned in the Mediterranean the other day – specifically, the cheerful news that the traffickers made 3 million bucks on the deal.
Police in Italy believe traffickers made some $3m (£1.9m; €2.5m) from 359 illegal migrants found abandoned on a cargo ship in the Mediterranean.
The Ezadeen was towed into the Italian port of Corigliano Calabro after being found by coast guards on Friday.
Most of those aboard appear to be Syrians, in the second such case involving a freighter this week.
You know – people fleeing for their lives from a deadly war and a murderous government.
The police chief of Cosenza province, Luigi Liguori, said each migrant had paid between $4,000 and $8,000 to board the ship.
Officers say the smugglers wore hoods and locked the migrants in the ship’s hold before apparently abandoning ship on a lifeboat.
Locked them in the hold??! Fuuuuuuuuck.
The smugglers’ new tactic appears to be simple and effective: point a cargo ship towards Italy and let the coastguard pick it up, the BBC’s James Reynolds reports from Corigliano Calabro.
Illegal migration to the EU has been fuelled by the civil war in Syria, which has driven people to seek asylum in Europe, along with economic migrants.
Last year it is estimated that nearly 3,500 refugees died trying to cross the Mediterranean while another 200,000 were rescued.
And lots of traffickers made lots of money.
The MV Ezadeen is apparently a livestock carrier. I bet the smugglers would treat a load of cattle better than they treated these refugees. Given their willingness to abandon ship I would guess the smugglers pay a pittance for these ships compared to what they’re getting from their victims.
Livestock don’t pay up front the way refugees do, after all. As horrible as this smugglers are, they do show some business acumen.
In the nineties, the Italian coast guard would probabely had rammed vessels like that.
Fortunately, this is no longer that way.