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https://www.valigiablu.it/strage-cutro-inchiesta-frontex-governo-ha-mentito/
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When 94 people, including 35 children, drowned 40 meters from the Steccato di Cutro beach last February 26, the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, said:“If we could, we would have saved the migrants.”And he had blocked the requests for transparency on the opaque chain of rescue and resignation of the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, for his words of rare inhumanity immediately after the tragedy and for the rescue intervention after the shipwreck had already occurred.
The government did not deliberately cause the migrants to die, Meloni responded to these requests while the blame and buck-passing between the Coast Guard (which reports to the Ministry of Transport) and the Financial Police (which reports to the Ministry of the Interior) continued. and Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency).Among those who claimed that they had been consulted only for information and that the operation was carried out by the maritime police, while admitting that they could have intervened on the morning of 26 February but had not done so due to procedural issues (Coast Guard), those who claimed that they were not entitled to provide assistance because the intervention was configured as "law enforcement" (Financial Police), and who reiterated that they had "immediately sent a report" to all the Italian authorities and that they had done what was within their competence (Frontex).
A'international investigation – carried on by Lighthouse Reports, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Le Monde, El Pais, Sky News, Domani – shows through unpublished documents, confidential sources, satellite images, 3D models and dozens of testimonies the flaws in the chain of command that led first to the shipwreck and then to the ricochet of responsibility between the three authorities involved.And it highlights how all the danger signals were underestimated from the beginning, deciding not to intervene with a search and rescue operation at sea (SAR) but with a "law enforcement" one.
Frontex monitors the Ionian Sea with planes and drones to identify suspicious boats.After his Eagle1 plane took off on February 25, he encountered "strong winds" hours before locating the Summer Love, according to a confidential report we obtained.
Frontex identified the vessel by tracking satellite phone calls made in Turkey and reported it as a "possible migrant vessel" with no visible safety vests and a "significant thermal response" from below deck, indicating an "unusual" number of people on board.
The investigation shows that since the evening of February 25, the day before the massacre, Frontex had sighted the ship, had transmitted the data immediately to the control center in Poland and had made it available to the Italian authorities.Furthermore, a representative of the financial police and the Italian coast guard were present in the monitoring room in Warsaw.Meloni had instead said at the time that from Frontex:«No emergency communication has arrived.We were not warned."
In addition to spotting the Summer Love, the thermal cameras on board the aircraft had detected "signs" indicating the presence of many people below deck.Furthermore, Frontex had also reported that the vessel did not have life jackets available.All the competent Italian authorities were aware of the vessel and the possibility that it was transporting migrants to the Italian coast.It is from this moment, says the international investigation, that the omissions in the stories of what happened begin.
First of all, Frontex, even before identifying the overcrowded wooden ship with almost 200 people on board, concealed the fact that the pilot had warned of strong winds.Boats like the Summer Love typically have room for 16 people.
The 3D reconstruction of the vessel makes it clear how overcrowded it would have appeared to those watching the surveillance footage and helps us better understand the situation on board before and during the shipwreck.
By looking at the 3D model, one can understand how in real time the Italian authorities were fully aware of the risks the vessel was facing.As shown by the documents, the information collected by the Frontex plane was transmitted live to the Italian authorities.
Bad weather, lack of life jackets and overcrowding are signs of danger, according to the law of the sea:however maritime authorities did not launch a search and rescue operation.“This decision had lethal consequences,” write the authors of the journalistic investigation.
But how could all this happen?Heard from Tomorrow, the admiral and former spokesman of the coast guard Vittorio Alessandro explains:«Many situations of clear danger are now recorded as migratory events, whereas previously they were identified as rescue situations.When boats are seen sailing afloat and with their engines running, it is mistakenly believed that they do not need assistance or even rescue.The case of Cutro is certainly one of these hypotheses" despite - adds the admiral - "that vessel, as photographed and described by the Frontex plane, was facing ruin because it was overloaded".
The underestimation of the event – continues the article by Tomorrow – “is the result of a clear political choice adopted since Matteo Salvini took over the Ministry of the Interior in 2019.According to a series of accesses to the documents of Other economics From 2019 to the first two months of 2023, 232,660 migrants arrived in Italy through 6,300 events.In almost six out of ten cases the events were classified as law enforcement and not search and rescue (SAR)”.
To the question of Tomorrow on why there is so much resistance to implementing search and rescue operations, Matteo Salvini responded:«Because it is proven that these are organized trips.SAR events respond to a rescue for an unexpected event."And he added:«In this case, trips are booked online with a starting point and duration.It will be necessary to review SAR regulations in these areas."
Meanwhile, two investigations have been launched in Italy:one on the reasons why no rescue vessel was sent before the shipwreck, the other focused on the alleged smugglers, for whom four suspects – Gun Ufuk, Sami Fuat, Ishaq Hassnan and Khalid Arslan – face charges of negligent shipwreck , of death as a consequence of another crime and aiding and abetting illegal immigration.
Khalid Arslan and Ishaq Hassnan (a Pakistani boy who was still a minor at the time of the shipwreck) declared themselves innocent and showed their lawyer the receipts for the payments for the trip, like all the other asylum seekers.Some survivors identified Khalid as a smuggler because he had assumed the role of translator between those driving the ship and the people on board.But for his lawyer, Salvatore Perri, there are no doubts:Khalid Arslan is innocent.In addition to the documents provided, this is also demonstrated by the aggression the two Turkish defendants received inside the prison.
Reconstructing the network of traffickers who organized Summer Love's journey is not easy.«This is a difficult network to rebuild, because there are dozens of traffickers even in every nation.Part of Khalid's payment was made in Pakistan, while others made payments in Afghanistan and Turkey.Once you arrive in Turkey from the countries of origin, the journey is managed by other organisations, mostly Turkish, but which also use workers of other nationalities", explains the lawyer Perri to Tomorrow.One thing is clear, the journalistic investigation concludes:the traffickers also had emissaries in Europe.
Preview image:Frame video La Repubblica via YouTube