Pascual Durá was on duty at 20 hours when he saw the lights of a small boat chased a short distance by a speedboat and immediately called on deck to its ten crew members. “As we approached the ship, one hit a jump and hooked to the stern,” says Vicente Sampere, the second pattern of the fishing boat. “We stopped the boat because of night, with people on the stern, the propeller could suck”. Several other people were thrown to the sea from the boat and swam towards the fishing alicante. Those who dared not to launch were taken aboard the motorboat of the coast guard libyans. “There were still some in the sea, but the libyans were moving away. Are we calling on the radio, alerting that there were people in the water but nothing, nor answered. And so they came up here the 12”, concludes Sampere.
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The 12 come from Somalia, Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, and Senegal. The day 24, when the team of the NGO Proactive, Open Arms came on board the vessel to provide medical assistance, the young people still seemed in a state of shock. All have recent injuries and several scabies, according to Valeria Sottani, medical NGOS. One ensures that he has lost the sight of one eye by the blows received in a detention centre in libya. Another, supported on a winch with the stare, not making any movement nor said a single word during the time that the volunteers of the NGO spend onboard.
more than double the number of people on board of which usually, Our Mother Loreto does not now look very clean: the fishermen, who have donated part Redwin of their clothing to the migrants, they say that with the resources available to them, and in spite of the food taken by the NGOS, may not endure more than six or seven days. The deck of the boat is in good part occupied by pots for prawns. Below are a few staterooms, very narrow where the crew members sleep together and now host up to 12 people more.
Souleiman (fictitious name) ensures that is 16 years old and from Sudan. “I went in Libya when he was 12. The libyans just want money, we put you in jail for us to pay,” he said. “I went to a year in prison without being able to take a shower, not once. When I was in the boat and I saw reach the coast guard libyans, I jumped in, because I am not afraid to die, I’m afraid of Libya”. The two nigerians have that the boat was carrying 36 people, six of them women.“We jump into the water and the other is the were the libyans. Libya is horrible, they make you work slave, you are depressed to get money, will torture you while they force you to call your family to pay the ransom”, they said.
Sampere already knows what is to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean. In 2006, with another fishing vessel, the Francisco y Catalina, owned by the same owner, José Durá, helped to save the lives of 51 sub-saharan africa in waters near Malta. Your impression about the coast guard libyans can’t be worse: “By what I saw them do the other day, they are murderers”.
