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Because Piantedosi is not entirely convincing about Cutro

1 year ago babelfish

Because Piantedosi is not entirely convincing about Cutro

The hearing of the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, on the shipwreck of Cutro commented by the analyst Vitalba Azzollini

“Going back to the moments immediately preceding the shipwreck and therefore to the stories of the survivors, the navigation had continued until 03.50, when, about 200 meters from the coast, flashing lights from the beach had been sighted and at that point the smugglers, fearing presence of the forces of order along the coast, make a sharp turn in an attempt to change direction to get away from that stretch of sea”.

It is one of the salient passages of Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, in the urgent information to the Chamber, on the decisive passages that led to the shipwreck of Cutro on 26 February last.

"At that juncture, the boat, being very close to the coast and in the middle of high waves, most likely hits the shallow water (a shoal) and due to the breaking of the lower part of the hull, begins to take on water – he clarifies the minister -. Still on the basis of the survivors' statements, at that point two of the smugglers jump into the water, while a third is stopped by the migrants, to prevent them from leaving them alone on the stranded boat; many other migrants, in the meantime, go up on deck in search of help and the smuggler who remains on board, taking advantage of the moment of chaos, manages to leave the boat on a small rubber dinghy and then gets the other two smugglers on board to head towards the it costs. At that precise moment a strong wave overturns the wooden boat and all the migrants fall into the sea while the boat is destroyed".

"To claim that the rescue would have been conditioned or even prevented by the Government constitutes a serious falsehood that offends, above all, the honor and professionalism of our operators engaged daily at sea, in particularly difficult scenarios", underlined the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, who added: "The need to protect life always has priority, whatever the initial nature of the operational intervention at sea".

In the Cutro shipwreck, "the first certain fact is that the Frontex air assets which first identified the vessel at 10.26 pm on 25 February 40 nautical miles from Italy, did not detect and, therefore, did not signaled a situation of distress on board, limiting itself to highlighting the presence of a person above deck, of possible other people below deck and a good buoyancy of the boat”, Piantedosi reiterated. “Frontex – continued Piantedosi – also noted that the boat proceeded at a regular speed (6 knots per hour), did not appear overloaded and did not 'list'. Moreover, no alarm signal or request for help came from the vessel in question".

“Since the event detected at 10.26 pm on 25 February did not have, nor did it suggest, a condition of distress, the Frontex structure – Piantedosi recalled – correctly reported it to the Italian law enforcement authorities and, for information, also to those of maritime rescue, as well as to its headquarters, as required by the existing procedures so that the competent national authorities manage the event with appropriate tools for this type of operation according to their regulations. I would add that Frontex, in addition to providing the national authorities with an 'early warning', i.e. an early notification of what has been observed, carries out monitoring of the suspicious vessel detected, interrupted, in our case, only because the plane was low on fuel and so he had to go back to base.”

This is how the analyst Vitalba Aazzolini, editorialist of the newspaper Domani , commented on Twitter some excerpts from Piantedosi's hearing.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/perche-piantedosi-non-convince-su-cutro/ on Wed, 08 Mar 2023 09:07:19 +0000.