Refugees Deeply | 14.07.2017
Thousands of pilots and navigators of migrant boats have been jailed in Italy. Ilaria Sesana takes a closer look at their stories and finds prosecutions that criminalize escaping migrants amid a growing campaign to change the courts’ approach to the “scafisti.”
PALERMO, ITALY – Yusuf does not deny driving the dinghy that brought him to Italy: “Yes, I was the one who drove the boat. Around me there were children crying and women screaming in fear. The dinghy we were on lost control and suddenly started spinning around. What else could I do? We all could have died that day.”
Speaking in Palermo, the Sicilian city where he has been since he arrived, he adds an important qualifier: “I wasn’t the captain.”
Born in Senegal, the 23-year-old left his native country to seek job opportunities and a future in Europe. Soon after reaching Libya, he found himself held captive by a group of traffickers. It took him several months to gather the 1,000 Libyan dinars ($726) necessary to pay off his captors and sail for Italy. On the night of July 27, 2016, he was taken to a beach together with hundreds of other people.