STECCATO CUTRO: Five days after leaving Turkiye, migrants crammed in darkness aboard a wooden sailboat pleaded with their traffickers to radio for help as they rocked in increasingly stormy seas off Italy.

The smugglers reassured them they were safe, holding up an iPad to show how close they were to the shore and saying they wanted to land on the southern toe of Italy in the dead of night to avoid police patrols and certain arrests.

Their confidence was misplaced.

Hours later, the boat, named “Summer Love”, smashed apart on rocks within sight of the village of Steccato di Cutro, killing at least 72 of the estimated 180 migrants aboard.

Unbeknownst to them, a plane from the European Union’s Frontex border mission had spotted the vessel around 5-1/2 hours earlier and signalled to Italian authorities that it could be carrying migrants below deck.

Victims’ relatives blame authorities for not doing enough; traffickers used jammers to evade tracking

However, two police boats sent out to intercept the vessel failed to locate it and turned back because of bad weather.

The disaster has cast a spotlight on ruthless smugglers who are increasingly using Turkiye as a launch pad for voyages to Italy. It has also raised questions about why Italian authorities failed to prevent one of the worst shipwrecks in the country’s recent history.

Reuters spoke to relatives of victims and officials involved in the investigation and reviewed survivors’ accounts of the deadly voyage.

They revealed the efforts made by the traffickers to avoid detection in a boat not fit for purpose. They also show how authorities on land failed to grasp the danger at hand.

Suspicions ignored

The migrants, including Afghans, Pakistanis, Iranians and Syrians, set sail from a secluded Turkish bay on Feb 22, paying 8,000 euros each for safe passage. After barely three hours, their yacht

broke down and they eventually transferred onto an old wooden ‘caicco’.

“It was dilapidated and didn’t have any seats... there were pools of oil on the floor,” one of the migrants told police, according to a transcript seen by Reuters.

Frontex said one of its planes spotted the boat 40 miles from the coast of Italy.

“There were no signs of distress,” the agency said in a statement, adding that it nonetheless raised suspicions because the plane’s thermal imaging showed there might be people below deck.

Upon information from Frontex Italian officials sent two patrol boats to investigate rather than order a rescue operation.

An official, who declined to be named, said the GdF boats were unable to reach the boat due to rough seas.

Tragedy unfolds

Survivors told investigators the traffickers changed direction in the early hours of Sunday, fearing there were police nearby.

Two migrants told police that the traffickers were equipped with a device for jamming telephone calls to prevent communication that could give away their location.

So far, the bodies of 28 minors and 30 women have been recovered.

Crotone chief prosecutor Giuseppe Capoccia has laun­ched two investigations, one into the traffickers and another into whether enough was done to avoid the tragedy.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2023