On two docks on opposite shores of the Mediterranean Sea, two Italian and Libyan families have been drawn into a small international crisis. The fate of 12 Italian fishermen held in Libya, appears to hinge on that of four Libyan footballers, jailed in Italy for alleged human trafficking.
In Mazara del Vallo, Sicily, family members have been calling for the immediate release of 12 detained fishermen, part of a crew that includes six Tunisians. Their vessel was seized on 1 September by Libyan patrol boats, who accused them of fishing in Libya’s territorial waters.
They were taken to Benghazi, where the commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA), Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, reportedly ordered their detention to last as long as Italy imprisons the four Libyan footballers, whose families claim were wrongly convicted.
“The situation is unbearable”, said Alessandro Giacalone, brother of one of the fishermen from the fishing boats ‘Antartide’ and ‘Medinea’. “After 16 days, I finally managed to speak to one of the crew members. He told us that they are all mentally strained and pleaded with us to do everything possible to get them out of there.”
Tensions have been rumbling in the 180 miles of sea separating Sicily from Libya since the mid-1990s. At that moment, Libya began protecting its fishing waters from foreign vessels with the use of force, which escalated in 2005 when Muammar Gaddafi unilaterally extended Libya’s territorial waters from 12 to 74 miles offshore. Fishing grounds for one of the world’s most prized crustaceans – the gambero rosso, or red prawn – have been at the centre of these tensions as the red prawn can cost up to €70 ($82) per kilo.
Usually, fishermen who are detained by Libya’s coast guards are released after just two weeks, following a string of negotiations. However, the most recent case has seen complications as allegations have surfaced that the Italians were smuggling drugs on the fishing boats.
Two weeks after they were first apprehended, the Italian news agency AGI published photos of 10 yellow sacks, allegedly containing unspecified drugs, laid out in front of one of the seized boats.
“They want to frame them, and now it’s clear that they’re raising the stakes,” said Marco Marrone, the owner of the boats. Marrone added that he had not received any confirmation on behalf of the Italian government regarding the latest Libyan accusations.
Italian authorities believe that Khalifa Haftar’s plan is clear. Any new accusations against the fishermen, who must now appear before a Libyan judge, are another indication that he is determined to force an exchange for the four Libyans detained in Italy.
Joma Tarek Laamami, Abdelkarim al-Hamad, Mohammad Jarkess are club footballers, and Abdel-Rahman Abd Al-Monsiff, a Libyan A series player. They were arrested in Sicily in 2015 and sentenced to 30 years for allegedly organising a sea crossing, in which 49 people died.
According to investigators, the four men were on the bridge of the ship, and allegedly locked dozens of people in the hull during a rough crossing. This move led to the migrants’ death when the ship capsized near the Sicilian coast. The Libyans’ defence said the accusation was groundless, given that there was no door on the ship separating the hull from the bridge, just small air vents. It also added that the 49 people who died, had been locked in the hull before the ship left for Europe.
The footballers’ families and friends claim the four Libyans were also refugees, who fled the civil war to continue their careers as footballers in Germany. They claim that the four were forced to pilot the boat by smugglers. A 2017 report by Borderline Sicilia, an NGO that provides legal assistance in migration cases, said that Italian prisons were increasingly housing migrants who “had been specifically trained as boat drivers – including minors – subjected to maltreatment and death threats prior to departure.”
Italy’s Foreign Minister, Luigi Di Maio, vowed that Italy “will not be blackmailed” by Libya in this specific case. The Italian District Attorney in charge of the investigation, Carmelo Zuccaro, has said that “an exchange would be repugnant.”
The protest by the fishermen’s family members has now moved to Rome, where – with picket signs in hand – they demanded the Italian government do everything in its power to free the men. In Benghazi, relatives of the four footballers are continuing their fight to release their loved ones.