Cutro, all the questions left unanswered a year after the massacre: “This shipwreck could have been avoided”

Time seems to have stopped on February 26, a year ago. It was 4 a.m. when the schooner crashed on the beach of Steccato di Cutro Summer Love left Turkey two days earlier. 180 Afghans and Iranians, who fled their respective regimes, looking for a second chance. In the last kilometer to landing, 94 people died, including 34 children. The bodies of 11 migrants were never found, sucked into the frigid waters of the Mediterranean. A year after that tragic day, while the families of the victims and survivors gathered in Cutro, things do not seem to have changed. No judicial truth has been obtained and, after 365 days, the questions still remain unanswered. At the press conference following the extraordinary meeting held in Cutro on March 9, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni threatened smugglers around the world, while Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi blamed migrants because “even 'they were desperate, they should not leave.' However, the government also guaranteed reunification and humanitarian corridors for family members. Promises betrayed, at least for the moment. Among the 81 survivors, some chose to stay in Cutro. In the municipality of the province of Crotone live around 9,000 people, including 300 foreigners.

“The sinking could have been avoided”

After Piantedosi's visit two days ago to the tomb of Ali, the youngest victim of the tragedy, according to what he writes Republic, Crotone Police Headquarters reportedly gave the survivors a form to request a reassessment of their application for international protection in order to grant them subsidiary protection instead of special protection. The latter, precisely because of the Cutro decree, cannot in fact be converted into another document. Even the Afghan ambassador in Rome assured that “we are working with the executive to allow family reunification”. What the relatives of the victims and survivors are demanding is “justice and the truth” and the possibility, guaranteed by the executive, of being able to reunite their families. They shouted it loud and clear during the procession organized today by the “February 26 Network”, in which party secretary Elly Schlein also took part. Their position is unanimous: “We want to denounce the Italian state”. For not saving their loved ones. For having sounded the alarm too late, for not having taken responsibility for yet another tragedy. “The sinking could have been avoided,” they sayHandle two survivors in their twenties, Nigeena Mamozai and her sister-in-law, Adiba Ander. “The Italian government was aware of the presence of our boat. We saw a helicopter about seven hours before the sinking. And other survivors saw it too. » But where are we with the investigations?

The legal process

A year after the massacre, the three investigations opened by the courts are progressing at different paces. The Crotone public prosecutor's office, seized of the trial, dealt with the suspected smugglers. According to the courts, five people caused the deaths of the 94 migrants. One drowned when the schooner crashed, the other four were tried. The 29-year-old Turk Gun Ufuk – who during his confession in early February described himself as a “political refugee and scapegoat” – will have to serve 20 years in prison and pay a fine of around three million euros. According to the judges, he is responsible for “contribution to illegal immigration, shipwreck through negligence and death resulting from another crime”.

At the end of the abbreviated procedure, the investigating judge also ordered him to pay compensation to certain civil parties: the victims' relatives, the Ministry of the Interior and the Calabria Region. The three other alleged captains, Sami Fuat, also 50 years old Turkish, Khalid Arslan, 25 years old, and Ishaq Hassnan, 22 years old, both Pakistanis, are tried before the Court which judges them according to the ordinary rite. . During the hearing, the deputy police commissioner of Crotone, who led the investigation into the sinking, detailed how the examination of the defendants' cell phones and their Whatsapp conversations revealed the existence of a network of human traffickers who organize trips from Turkey to Europe. . A parallel investigation was opened into this latest case by the Catanzaro District Anti-Mafia Directorate, and it is still ongoing.

“The coast guard was aware, but was not on site”

The first to rush to the beach to save the migrants from the sea were three fishermen: Vincenzo Luciano, Gabriel Curca and Ivan Paone. On February 14, Curca and Paone testified in court, confirming the flaws and delays in the rescue system. “When I called the coast guard (at 4:34 a.m., ed) to warn him of the presence of a boat in danger, they told me that they already knew about the wrecked boat, but that at that time there was still no one there: neither them nor the carabinieri”, responds Paone during the intervention hearing before the court of Crotone. “We took out of the water living people and many dead – remembers the fisherman -, everyone we could, but we were alone on this beach.

The investigation continues, but a year later, the three fishermen cannot forget these tragic images: “I come here every morning. The memories remain. I come here and I think… here I found one, here I found another…”, says Luciano, interviewed by the media on the occasion of the three days of commemoration in Cutro. ” There are people who have not yet managed to swim in the sea, I cannot do it – he concludes – I put my feet in the water and I think of those children who had eyes open.” During the same hearing against the alleged smugglers, Carabinieri deputy brigadier Gianrocco Chievoli also confirmed the fishermen's testimony. “Since I took office, since midnight, no one had warned us of the arrival of a migrant boat. As soon as we arrived on the beach, we realized the seriousness of the situation and asked for reinforcements – he emphasizes –. I saw the first patrol of Botricello's colleagues about 40 minutes later.” The trial was adjourned until April 10 to hear three of the survivors who are now in Hamburg and who will be heard, under international letters rogatory, by videoconference.

The lack of help, the delay and the rebound of responsibility

In the meantime, the closure of investigations relating to the second line, that into the alleged delays in rescuing the schooner in difficulty after the report received the day before from Frontex, is expected within a month. There are six names in the register: three financiers stationed in Vibo Valentia, Taranto and Crotone and three covered by omitted, but who according to well-informed sources could be coast guard soldiers. The charges against them are “culpable shipwreck, refusal and omission to perform official duties and involuntary manslaughter.” The period between 10:26 p.m. on February 25 when the Summer Love was spotted by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Eagle One aircraft at 4:15 a.m. on February 26, 2023, the presumed time of the sinking. Why have sea rescue operations not started? And why, once the accident happened, did they arrive late?, many people wonder. The EU agency and the Italian authorities (financial police and coast guard) immediately responded to accusations regarding the lack of assistance.

In recent days, a detail has been revealed: the night of the tragedy of control room from Frontex in Warsaw – he writes EURACTIV, who consulted a document dated November 17, there were two Italian officers, “who would have underestimated the danger”. The Fundamental Rights Office (Fro), which monitors the implementation of Frontex's fundamental rights obligations, wrote in the report that cases like this “can quickly escalate into an emergency” and that “monitoring careful attention and even assistance from the Italian authorities in such cases are imperative. The role of Frontex, however, remains to be determined: on September 6, the experts consulted by the Crotone public prosecutor's office to establish what happened on the night of February 25 to 26, 2023, underlined the extent to which the information disseminated by the Agency with institutional interlocutors was “very approximate, even misleading”. The fact is that from the investigations, statements and testimonies collected, a year after the tragedy, a picture emerges with many circumstances to be clarified. And at the expense, once again, of those who risk their lives for a (better) future.

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