The three Maltese men arrested in Sicily on charges of human trafficking refuse to answer the judge’s questions as their trial opens in Ragusa
Charlot Zahra
Three Maltese men accused of human trafficking were arraigned in a Sicilian court yesterday morning and charged with the landing of 19 immigrants off the Ragusan coast on the night between Friday and Saturday.
The men – Madrid-born Joseph better known as José Xerri, 43, Michael Aquilina, 35 from Pietà, and Kurt Buhagiar, 26 from Birkirkara –were charged in front of Ragusa’s judge for preliminary investigation, with conspiracy in human trafficking, resisting a warship and trying to ram it.
Sources close to the investigations told MaltaToday that the hearing, which took place at the Ragusa prison, lasted only a few minutes as they did not answer to the questions asked by the Ragusa GIP Vincenzo Ignaccolo.
Biagio Ragusa, the defence lawyer for the three men, who was appointed as legal aid by the Italian authorities, also called on the Court to award the three a measure which is less severe than arrest.
The Ragusa GIP has reserved the right to decide at a later stage and today he is expected to announce his decision on bail.
Also taking part in the preliminary hearing was Carmel Petralia, the Procuratore della Repubblica at Ragusa.
Sources close to the investigations told MaltaToday that the immigrants had told the Italian police that they had paid €1,000 for each voyage.
Like the on duty magistrate in Malta, the Italian judge for preliminary investigations (Giudice Per le Indagini Preliminari – GIP) examines the prima facie evidence and decides whether to confirm the arrest or not.
The three Maltese men were arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning by the Italian Guardia di Finanza after a high-speed chase during which rounds of high-calibre shots were fired across the bow of the “Enrique”, a Valletta-registered powerboat, to put an end to a high-speed chase.
They were intercepted shortly after allegedly ferrying 19 African migrants into Sicily, who had been tucked into the belly of the powerboat throughout their journey.
The men were chased for one and a half hours and shot at by a Guardia di Finanza high velocity patrol vessel, that managed to keep up with their four-engine 1,000 horsepower boat in international waters early Saturday morning.
As a result of the high-speed chase, one of the Maltese men – Aquilina – suffered fractures to his ribs, while Scerri suffered injuries to his face. Aquilina was hospitalised a result of his injuries, which should heal in around 20 days, according to the Italian authorities.
As the three men were allegedly ferrying the immigrants in the Punta Braccetto area of Ragusa on the night between Friday and Saturday, they were intercepted by patrol boats from the Italian Guadia di Finanza in a joint operation with the Ragusa Mobile Squad.
News reports confirmed that the Italian border police monitored the disembarking of the migrants, before giving chase to the Maltese who were speeding back to Malta.
All three face a maximum of 15 years each in jail if found guilty under the revised tougher immigration laws recently introduced in Italy. According to the Italian magistrates, Xerri, Aquilina and Buhagiar are to be charged with human trafficking, resisting a warship, and attempting to ram it.
The Maltese men were interrogated and transferred to a jail in Ragusa, while investigators have confirmed that a GPS found onboard the powerboat revealed readings that clearly showed they had left from Malta.
The GPS had also marked the site where the 19 African migrants – including a woman – were let off.
Moreover, an analysis of the same GPS tracking made by the Guardia di Finanza indicated that there were other points recorded along the Ragusan coast as well as at Licata, in the province of Agrigento, where the Italian authorities suspect that the Maltese powerboat had made other landings in the past.
The 19 immigrants – 18 men from Nigeria and a woman from Ivory Coast – asked for political asylum as soon as they landed at Punto Braccetto.
Italian media had reported that the immigrants had paid around €2,000 instead of the usual €1,000 per passenger for making the “luxury” trip on board a smaller vessel and much quicker than the usual fibreglass boats normally used for immigrant crossings from Libya to Sicily or Malta.
Senior police sources confirmed with this paper that José Xerri, as one of the arrested men was well known to them and was among the list of “usual suspects”.
On Saturday afternoon, the Maltese police confirmed with sister paper Illum that the local police was “co-operating with its Italian counterparts through Interpol channels”.
The next day, on Sunday morning, Maltese police seized a red van belonging to Scerri, one of the suspects, which was parked in the coastal town of St. Paul’s Bay.
Owners of a number of boats that sport high-powered engines had also been asked to hand in their keys pending further instructions.
Italian naval assets had been on the lookout for Maltese traffickers on powerboats after a recent surge in reports of migrant landings on the Sicilian coast.
For the past one and a half years, the Italian authorities had been investigating repeated landings in the Sicilian coast of small groups of migrants in the Sicilian coast by small powerboats, which, when compared to the larger boats used for boat journeys from Libya to Sicily, are smaller and therefore more difficult to detect.
While the 19 migrants who were intercepted on Saturday morning were likely to be deported to Malta under the EU’s Dublin II agreement, Maltese police are waiting for their Italian counterparts to supply them with their identities in a bid to trace the migrant centres they allegedly went missing from.
However, the immigrants could not recall the identities of the men as they had worn black balaclavas during the journey between Malta and Ragusa, sources close to the investigation told MaltaToday.
During the past few weeks, MaltaToday had reported that the Italian authorities were investigating the “resumed” ferrying of migrants from Malta to Sicily with powerboats.
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