Sink of F 174

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Memorial near Portopalo, 2014

On the night of December 25th to 26th, 1996, when F 174 went down, at least 283 migrants from India , Sri Lanka and Pakistan were killed off Cape Passaro , the southern tip of Sicily. When people smugglers tried to transfer people from the Honduran freighter Yiohan to the smaller Maltese boat F 174 at gunpoint in stormy seas , the two boats collided and F 174 sank. It was the largest shipwreck in the Mediterranean in the second half of the 20th century. The scene of the accident has been used by fishermen fromPortopalo di Capo Passero was kept secret and the legal processing took years.

Downfall

On the night of December 25th to December 26th, 1996, most of the 464 migrants were supposed to change from the Honduran freighter Yiohan to the small Maltese boat F 174 in order to be able to go ashore in Sicily, benefiting from the Christmas holidays. More than 300 migrants - sometimes forced with guns - had to change to the boat, which was built for 80 people, in rough seas. Presumably due to the excessive and uneven weight load and a collision with the Yiohan , water penetrated the boat and the Greek captain Zervoudakis Eftychios changed course again to the Yiohan and then jumped into the sea to reach the rescue ship. The Yiohan also turned and then collided with the bow of the F 174 , which then sank. Only 29 people were able to save themselves from thrown ropes, then the Yiohan disappeared without having given an emergency signal and reached the Peloponnese four days later . The 150 remaining passengers were then initially held captive on farms and finally released. They notified the Greek police and were able to credibly describe the incident to the responsible public prosecutor, so that a search for the wreck began.

seek

The Maltese authorities had the Italian coast guard already on December 26 Guardia Costiera informed about the disappearance of the fishing boat and its supposed demise and on December 31, the transmitted sea rescue center of Piraeus , the information of the arrived in Greece. A search of several days by the Italian and Maltese sea rescue forces with ships and airplanes did not reveal any traces of the sinking. Neither bodies nor survivors could be found.

For years after Christmas 1996 the fishermen from Portopalo found corpses and body parts in their nets, which they threw back into the sea, as months earlier a fisherman had suffered serious loss of earnings because he had been prevented from leaving by the authorities when he was after the rescue of a dead migrant had been questioned and his boat had been examined by the authorities. Meanwhile, the media and Italian politicians turned the sunken boat into a ghost ship ( naufragio fantasma ) in public discourse , which only "allegedly" sank .

reception

The downfall was barely noticed in the media. Even after journalist John Hooper discovered and examined the Yiohan under a changed name, the Italian media barely reported about it. Only relatives of the victims, some journalists and the public prosecutor's offices tried to clarify the situation. It wasn't until 2001 that La Republica's Mario Bellu revealed the story after a fisherman from Portopalo found the papers of a victim and turned to the press. The fisherman was so shunned in Portopalo that he gave up his job.

La Republica then financed the search with a diving robot in the same year and presented the underwater images of the wreck. In June 2001, four Italian Nobel Prize winners turned to the Italian government to ask for the wreck to be salvaged.

Reconditioning

The Lebanese captain of the Yiohan El Hallal was arrested and released twice: in 1998 because the accident occurred outside of Italian territorial waters and in 2001 because El Hallal himself was classified as an illegal immigrant and was to be deported to an internment camp in France.

Ahmed Sheik Tarub, a Maltese national of Pakistani origin, was sentenced to 30 years in prison by the Sicilian Court of Appeals thirteen years after the accident as organizer of the unsuccessful human smuggling. Youssef El Hallal, the captain of the Yiohan , was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2008. It could not be clarified whether the F 174 was deliberately rammed - as survivors said - or whether there was an accident.

literature

  • Maurizio Albahari: Crimes of Peace: Mediterranean Migrations at the World's Deadliest Border . University of Pennsylvania 2015, ISBN 978-0-8122-4747-3 .
  • Maurizio Albahari: Death and the Modern State: Making Borders an Sovereignty at the Southern Edges of Europe . University of California, Working Paper 137, May 2006.
  • Giovanni Maria Bellu: I fantasmi di Portopalo . Mondadori 2017, ISBN 978-88-04-67543-3 (not viewed)
  • John Hooper: Now You See Them, Now You Don't: Italy's Visible and Invisible Immigrants . In: Reporting at the Southern Borders . Ed .: Giovanna Dell'Orto, Vicki L. Birchfield, Routledge 2014, ISBN 978-0-415-83588-6 , p. 183 ff.
  • Sergio Taccone: Portopalo dossier. Il naufragio fantasma . Verità a confronto. Ginevra Bentivoglio Editoria 2000, ISBN 978-88-95064-07-9 . (not viewed)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Karl Hoffmann: The secretive tragedy in the Mediterranean . Deutsche Welle, December 30, 2006, accessed October 5, 2019.
  2. ^ Maurizio Albahari: Crimes of Peace: Mediterranean Migrations at the World's Deadliest Border . P. 62 f.
  3. ^ Maurizio Albahari: Crimes of Peace: Mediterranean Migrations at the World's Deadliest Border. P. 63.
  4. ^ John Hooper: Collision in Mediterranean kills 280 . Observer, January 5, 1997, accessed October 21, 2018
  5. ^ Maurizio Albahari: Death and the Modern State: Making Borders an Sovereignty at the Southern Edges of Europe . University of California, Working Paper 137, May 2006
  6. ^ A b John Hooper: The Sinking of the F174 . Retrieved October 5, 2019.
  7. ^ Maurizio Albahari: Crimes of Peace: Mediterranean Migrations at the World's Deadliest Border . P. 63 f.
  8. ↑ a b Maltese Gets 30 years for voluntary mass homicide . Malta Independent, March 13, 2009, accessed October 5, 2019.
  9. ^ Maurizio Albahari: Death and the Modern State: Making Borders an Sovereignty at the Southern Edges of Europe . P. 15.
  10. ↑ John Hooper: Justice nears for 283 'ship of death' victims . Guardian, October 19, 2003, accessed October 4, 2019.

Coordinates: 36 ° 25 ′ 31 ″  N , 14 ° 54 ′ 34 ″  E