The Mediterranean wall

They did not all die of asphyxia, as was first thought. Some were beaten to death. The coastguard found 25 bodies in the hold of the boat coming from Tripoli, among about 300 Somali, Ghanaian and Nigerian migrants rescued off the coast of Lampedusa during the night of 31 July 2011. Some worrying facts about the dynamics of the events and the responsibility of the people smugglers have already emerged from the first accounts by the survivors: ‘They shouted to get out through the trap door but were thrown back down. They asked for help because they had no oxygen. One of them managed to get out through the trap door but some men took him and threw him into the sea, where he drowned.’

Part of the group was forced below deck, where there was also the engine, for fear that the boat, which was only 15 metres long, would capsize. It was useless to protest and try to get back on deck. For days the Italian media kept coming up with the image of those bodies lying on Favarolo jetty in Lampedusa, one beside the other, wrapped in blue plastic bags. They were all very young and there was also a woman among them. The first results of the autopsy confirmed deaths not only due to asphyxiation and carbon monoxide fumes from the engine, but also from violent beatings. According to the report by the police doctor, one of the victims had a fractured skull in two places and another had fractures to the cheekbone and forehead. The Department of Public Prosecutions in Agrigento arrested the six alleged people smugglers on the boat, one of whom was Moroccan and the others Syrian and Somali, accusing them of encouraging illegal immigration and the crime of murder as a result of another offence. According to the magistrates, they had acted ‘with cruelty for despicable reasons’.

The survivors, including 36 women and 21 children, said they had passed another five boats with just as many migrants aboard. New boats arrived during the hours and days that followed, loaded with people fleeing from war-torn Libya and people escaping from other conflicts, particularly in the Horn of Africa. As with migrants at the Port of Calais, at the border of Lampedusa there are potential asylum-seekers, forced to leave their countries.