The prosecutor's office in Agrigento, Sicily, has opened an investigative file against unknown individuals for a shipwreck last Wednesday in Libyan waters about 30 miles north of the coast.Six migrants lost their lives in the shipwreck including a six-month-old infant from Guinea.
An investigation by the prosecutor's office in Agrigento is seeking to understand the circumstances of a November 11 shipwreck that occurred in Libyan waters about 30 miles north of the coast.
Six migrants lost their lives in the incident including a six-month-old infant originally from Guinea named Yusuf who was buried on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.
The probe, opened on Saturday, is against unknown individuals and the possible crimes listed are shipwreck and aiding and abetting clandestine immigration.
Were rescue operations delayed?
The investigation into the shipwreck is examining the situation from various angles and taking into consideration issues pertaining to international jurisdiction.The inquiry aims to ascertain whether there were delays in the rescue operation after the alarm was launched by the Spanish Humanitarian organization Open Arms, which has a ship patrolling the Mediterranean at the moment, and intervened in Libyan waters.
In addition to the corpse of the infant boy, the bodies of the five other victims were taken by Open Arms to the western Sicilian town of Trapani. The boy's mother was transferred to Lampedusa and is currently in a migrant reception center on the island. Those rescued were transferred onto a quarantine ship off the Trapani coast on Saturday.
The NGO Open Arms tweeted that, finally, the survivors' "odyssey at sea is over" and expressed the hope that Europe would give them a life they deserve.
Infant buried on Lampedusa
On November 14, the infant Yusuf Ali Kanneh was buried in the Lampedusa cemetery. The small white coffin was buried in the cemetery a few hundred meters from Cala Pisana, where unidentified migrants who also died at sea are buried.
A sort of gravestone as well as flowers and candles were placed on top of his grave on which his name and the date and place of his birth were written: April 26, 2020, Libya.
The boy's date of birth is shown inside a boat under a rainbow, while the date of his death, November 11, 2020, is illustrated as being at the bottom of a sea with "Mediterranean" written on it.
The infant's 17-year-old mother attended the funeral and she is currently being assisted by volunteers and psychologists at the hotspot on the island.The island's parish priest, Father Carmelo La Magra, also attended the burial.