30 yrs upheld against people trafficker

(ANSA) - Palermo, April 15 - The Palermo court of appeals on Friday upheld a 30-year prison sentence against a Somali national who skippered a migrant vessel that sank off Lampedusa Island on October 3, 2013, killing at least 366 people.
    Mouhamud Elmi Muhdin was rescued from survivors who tried to lynch him at a migrant reception center on the Sicilian island in 2013, and who identified him as one of their traffickers.
    He was found guilty last year of human trafficking, criminal racketeering with intent to abet illegal immigration, and rape.
    "The fact that the verdict was upheld brings justice at least insofar as Muhdin's cruelty towards the young Eritreans he abducted in the desert - his torture of the men and his rapes of the women," said Lampedusa Mayor Giusy Nicolini.
    The 155 survivors of the trek from the Horn of Africa through the Sahara and across the Mediterranean from Libya told police at the time that all the female asylum seekers from Eritrea, Somalia and Syria were raped by the traffickers during the voyage.