Two men have been arrested over last weekend’s boat disaster off the coast of Libya that caused the deaths of between 700 and 900 people.
When Italian coastguard ship the Gregoretti arrived into Catania port at midnight on Monday with 27 survivors of the shipwreck, two of the survivors were immediately arrested and taken into police custody.
The two men are the boat’s captain, Tunisian Mohammed Ali Malek (27), and ship’s mate Syrian Mahmud Bikhit.
Both men have been charged with manslaughter, shipwreck and the promotion of clandestine immigration.
Confirmation of the arrests came from cabinet undersecretary and infrastructure minister Giovanni Delrio who was on the harbour front to officially acknowledge the arrival of the survivors.
Yesterday, there were further developments when Carlotta Sami, spokeswoman for UN refugee agency UNHCR, said survivors had spoken of a "collision" between the migrant vessel and the King Jakob, the Portuguese merchant ship that had answered the migrants' alarm signals.
The Catania public prosecutor's office has not ruled out a collision. However, it believes that, even if the two vessels did come too close together, that it was migrants on the top deck rushing to one side when the King Jakob arrived that unbalanced the vessel which was already in difficulty.
Survivors’ testimony
Public prosecutor Giovanni Salvi confirmed that the two men arrested had been identified because of the testimony of other survivors.
Investigating magistrates, who began their questioning of survivors on the Gregoretti even before it left Malta on its way to Catania on Monday night, discovered that several of the survivors pointed to the Tunisian and the Syrian as the two traffickers who had been in charge of the ill-fated fishing vessel.
Another survivor, who is in hospital in Catania, has also independently identified both men when shown photographs of them.