It was what the Libyan people traffickers in coastal towns like Zuwara and Sabratha call a “fat one” or an “elephant”. It was an unnamed 27-meter-long metal-hulled fishing boat acquired from neighboring Tunisia. Had they been sentimental men, which they were not, the traffickers might have named the vessel something like “Small Fortune” because this boat would bring them around a million dollars for a single night’s work.
The rusting blue hulk was valued because in its deep fish hold could be stored significant numbers of migrants who had paid around $1,600 for the trip from Libya into international waters. From there a distress call would be sent out and the EU rescue services would send vessels to collect the migrants.
In 2015, this battered blue fishing vessel left Libya with more than 700 Sub-Saharan Africans on board. It was captained by Tunisian Mohammed Ali Malek with a Syrian and at least one African crew member, all almost certainly armed. Once beyond Libya’s territorial waters, they used a satellite phone to send a distress call to the pre-programmed number of the EU Operation Sophia rescue team in Rome. The nearest vessel was a merchant ship rather than one of the EU naval vessels. This was all the people traffickers could have hoped for. There was a chance that once they had transferred their terrified human cargo - many of whom had never seen the sea before - the crew could turned “the elephant” round and take it back to Libya for another million dollars’ worth of migrants.
Next best to an ordinary cargo vessel is one of the civilian rescue boats operated by European charities. The huge rubber rafts loaded with up to two hundred migrants can generally be sacrificed, but the outboard motors and mobile phones can sometimes be reclaimed by armed men in Libyan vessels that swoop down on rescues. One such highly-publicized intervention this summer by a craft that looked like a heavily-armed Libyan coastguard vessel caused at least 28 migrants to drown when the raft foundered in front of helpless rescuers.
But for the gang of which Mohammed Ali Malek was a member, it was not going to work out that way. In court in Italy this week, prosecutors said that because of his inexperience as a helmsman, Malek had collided with the merchant ship gouging a hole near the bow of the rusting trawler. It immediately began to fill with water and sank within minutes. The hundreds of migrants in the fish hold, on which the hatches had been secured so more migrants could be crammed on deck, had no chance. Of the more than 700 men, women and children on board, only 28, including Mohammed Ali Malek and his Syrian conspirator Mahmoud Bikhit survived.
The court sentenced Malek to 18 and Bikhit to five years in jail. In a futile gesture, it ordered them to pay millions of dollars in compensation to the victims’ families. The EU claims to be collecting intelligence on the land-based Libyan people traffickers, who this year alone it says made at least $340 million from their loathsome activities. But none has yet been indicted, which is itself an indictment of the EU as well as of the feeble UN-backed government in Tripoli.
