They would have driven a dinghy, which left from the coast of Tunisia with 24 illegal migrants on board, including a newborn baby of a few months, the smugglers of Tunisian nationality subjected to judicial police custody by the policemen of the Flying Squad of Trapani. The two Tunisian citizens would have driven the vessel headed towards the coast of Marsala, until, off the coast of the island of Marettimo, due to the difficulties of floating the hull, the migrants on board would have asked to be left on the coast of the island. According to the investigators’ reconstruction, the two smugglers thus abandoned most of the passengers to continue the journey, with four illegal immigrants on board, towards the Sicilian coast, trying to avoid detection by the police forces.
The report of a vessel in transit instead allowed the vessel to be traced, rescued by a patrol boat from the Port Authority; during the transshipment phases, the rescued migrants reported the presence of their other compatriots, abandoned shortly before in Cala Conca, west of the island of Marettimo, in the Egadi archipelago, allowing them to be found. It took about ten days of investigation to identify and stop the smugglers from the Trapani Flying Squad, who were then taken to prison: «as they were seriously suspected of aiding and abetting illegal immigration – they explain from the Trapani Police Headquarters -. The arrest, at the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, was then validated by the Judge for Preliminary Investigations of the Court of Trapani, who ordered precautionary custody in prison for both those arrested”. In the same investigation, two Tunisians were arrested for illegal re-entry following an expulsion order, with accompaniment to the border.
The police’s electronic eye has been in operation at the Ronciglio pier in Trapani for a few weeks. This is a modern police station useful for the identification and photo reporting of migrants who land in our country every day. It is the most modern and strategic for its position and has come into operation at the port of Trapani.
It guarantees the streamlining of reception operations, which currently take hours, and allows databases to be brought into contact at a national level before assigning each migrant to the respective reception centre.
