The Sea Watch (Continued)

Sea Watch captain Carola Rackete


Last year, a German NGO ship captain, Carola Rackete, made headlines when she sailed into an Italian harbor against orders with her boat, the Sea Watch loaded with illegal migrants. In the process, she rammed an Italian patrol boat.

Now we learn that three of her "refugees" were men who had committed torture and murder in Libyan detention camps. The below article from Il Giornale is translated by Fousesquawk.


https://www.ilgiornale.it/news/politica/arrivarono-carola-rackete-condannati-perch-torturatori-1866638.html

They arrived with Carola Rackete: Convicted because they were torturers
-Chiara Giannini, 30 May  2020

They had arrived aboard the Sea Watch (captained by) Carola Rackete, the German commander of the ship, who last year rammed a Guardia di Finanza patrol boat, and had been recognized as torturers in the Libyan detention centers by some migrants disembarked from the  Alex and Co. of  Mediterranea Saving Humans.

The Messina Judge of Preliminary Hearing (GUP) has now sentenced each of  them to 20 years in prison. They are Mohamed Condè, aka Suarez, 22 from Guinea, Hameda Ahmed, 26, from Egypt and Mahmoud Ashuia, from Egypt, 24. They had been arrested on September 16 last year at the Messina hotspot and accused of torture, sexual violence, criminal association, human trafficking, and murder. The detention of the three, adjudicated with the abbreviated rite formula, had taken place by order of the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of Agrigento.

The fact that they had arrived on board the Sea Watch (captained by) Carola Rackete, had been kept under wraps both by the Viminale (Ministry of Interior) and the police heads, but reported exclusively by Il Giornale.

Meanwhile, the landings of migrants continues uninterrupted. The Lampedusa reception center is full. Within a few hours, numerous boats with 185 people have arrived inside the port. After the arrivals of recent weeks from Tunisia, those from Libya have resumed. All this despite the hard work of the Tripoli Coast Guard, which yesterday took back about 200 migrants. And yesterday, the Guardia di Finanza recovered 50 other people off the island, almost all from Bangladesh and Morocco. "They tell us that they are fleeing Covid," says a law enforcement operator employed at Lampedusa, " and that they are coming to Italy because they have realized that they can now be regularized and that they can find a job,"' after the announcement of Minister Teresa Bellanova. And he continues: “Now we're not even waiting for them to arrive anymore. We have been given orders  to go and look for them." It is questionable why, given that the Interior Minister, Luciana Lamorgese, in a period of Covid emergency, had spoken of "unsafe Italian ports".