Police said Monday they arrested
five alleged human smugglers caught as part of the wave of more
than 3,500 migrants who arrived on Italian shores over the past
few days.
The captain of one of the migrant ships, carrying about 205
migrants, asked for leniency in exchange for his confession of
piloting the boat that was tracked by a patrol ship from Malta
before it arrived in Sicily Sunday.
It was part of a series of arrivals of migrants from Syria
and North Africa in about 11 different boats found in Italian
waters since Friday.
The Italian Air Force was called in to relay many of the
migrants from the Sicilian city of Catania to centres in Rome
and Verona, to relieve some of the burden on arrival centres in
Sicily.
The arrivals included some 838 migrants rescued from the
sea on Saturday while another vessel carrying 275 people landed
on the southern Italian island of Lampadesua.
Another 720 from Libya were ferried into Pozzallo after
they were rescued by Italian authorities working through the
Mare Nostrum (our sea) program, and 147 people arrived in
Catania.
Some migrants said they paid first for the journey from
Eritrea to Libya, and again for the voyage from Libya to Italy,
which for many migrants is a stepping stone into the rest of
Europe.
Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said last week
that almost 40,000 migrants have arrived already this year,
almost as many as the total 43,000 arrivals reported for all of
2013.
"Caution is necessary over estimates on 2014 arrivals but
migrant pressure is very high and the trend is growing," Alfano
said.
Most of that pressure lands on Italian shoulders as the
country's southernmost shores, especially the islands of
Lampedusa and Sicily, are the first points of arrival for
migrants arriving from the Middle East and North Africa crowded
on to flimsy boats and rafts.
Most migrants "are asking for protection and it is
therefore mandatory to welcome them though this obligation
concerns Europe and not a single country".
Alfano called for increased resources for the European
Union's border management agency Frontex, which helps to patrol
the southern borders, and said it should move its headquarters
to Italy.
This will be a theme for Italy when it assumes the
six-month duty presidency of the European Union in July.
He also urged the international community to do more to
help would-be migrants remain in their homelands.
Since the deaths of some 400 migrants in October in Italian
waters in two separate sea disasters, Italy has established a
search-and-rescue program called Mare Nostrum (our sea) to try
to avoid such deaths in future.
But critics say the program only encourages human
smugglers, who know their passengers will be quickly rescued
from the seas.
The rise in migrants has swamped the Italian government's
system for welcoming and housing newcomers along its southern
shores, but Alfano said a national plan is being put in place
"to distribute immigrants shared by regions, provinces and
municipalities".
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