Serious boat accident:

Is Frontex partly to blame for dozens of deaths?

In memory of the people who died in a boat accident near Cutro.

(Bild: Tiziana FABI / AFP)

On Thursday, carabinieri searched the offices of the EU border protection agency Frontex and the Italian coast guard in Rome. The background to this was the shipwreck in Cutro off the coast of the southern Italian region of Calabria on February 26, in which 94 migrants died. There are now suspected delays that could have cost people their lives.

Frontex stated that there was no immediate danger from the radar system on the day of the shipwreck. The coastguard stated that it would have carried out a rescue operation in the heavy seas if it had been alerted. 

Both Frontex and the Italian coastguard had been accused of intervening too late in the rescue of the migrants, but this was firmly denied by the government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Rescue workers recovered masses of bodies from the sea after the boat accident on February 26.

(Bild: Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Search for bodies suspended 
Following the fatal shipwreck off Cutro on February 26, the Italian authorities suspended the search for bodies this week. The wooden boat had set off from western Turkey with around 180 people on board, but was wrecked in stormy weather off the coast of Calabria in southern Italy.

80 people survived the accident. Six people are still missing. The state provincial office in the nearby town of Crotone announced that it had closed a coordination center for the search, but would reactivate the unit if more bodies were spotted.

48 of the recovered bodies were flown to Afghanistan for burial. Other bodies were transferred to Tunisia, Iran, Palestine and Pakistan, while some were buried in Finland, Germany and Italy.

Four traffickers allegedly responsible for disaster 
Four traffickers are being held responsible for the disaster, including a 28-year-old Turk who was arrested in Graz at the beginning of March on the basis of a European arrest warrant. He has since been handed over to the Italian police and is being held in a prison in Crotone. The public prosecutor's office in Crotone is investigating him and three other suspected traffickers for manslaughter, negligent assault and aiding and abetting illegal immigration.