Migrant ghost ships: Who are the people smugglers?

BBC NEWS

– by Jasmine Coleman –

Human traffickers are believed to have set the Ezadeen cargo ship on autopilot before abandoning it to continue at full speed across the Mediterranean with 359 illegal migrants on board.

[…] Police in Italy say they arrested three people when coastguards managed to board the Blue Sky M.

According to reports in Italian media, one of them was Rani Sarkas, a Syrian migrant who said he had been paid £10,000 by smugglers to take charge of the ship once they had abandoned it.

“Although the Italian and other governments may be often proud of some arrests of ‘boat drivers’, the illegal migration bosses are still safely based in Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Italy,” said Andrea Di Nicola, assistant professor in criminology at the University of Trento and co-author of the book Confessions of a People Smuggler. […]

www.bbc.com/world-europe