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Boat people from Africa, the Middle East fuel trade in illegal immigrants

Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE
Friday, July 2, 1999

NICOSIA [MENL] -- Thousands of Arabs and Africans are paying thousands of dolllars each to join a growing trade in illegal immigrants to Cyprus and southern European countries, officials said.

The illegal immigration involves forged documentation and harrowing trips by passengers who are left stranded by unscrupulous ship operators.

On Thursday, Cypriot authorities were dealing with the operators and passengers of a ship that drifted for nine days in the eastern Mediterranean as illegal migrants fought over food and water.

Officials said the organizers of the illegal immigrant trade come from Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq. They charge Africans for a trip that begins from the center of the continent, makes stops in North African ports and tries to enter such destinations as Cyprus, Greece and Italy.

The ordeal of the Syrian-registered fishing trawler Rida-Allah began its journey when it sailed from Tripoli in northern Lebanon on June 18. Documents on the ship declared its destination as Benghazi.

Instead, the ship kept sailing east. Cypriot coastal authorities tracked and boarded the ship but its captain insisted that it was heading toward Libya. Officials said the captain even threw off guns stored on-board.

Finally, the ship developed engine trouble and was left to drift in the Mediterranean. The 111 passengers sweltered in the summer heat and fought among themselves for food and water.

Two of the passengers escaped in a raft for land. On Monday, a Ukrainian ship spotted the raft and eventually found the mother ship. By that time, two people had already died, some of the passengers were unconscious and many others required treatment.

"Children and pregnant women had drunk sea water to try and quench their thirst, and children as young as three fought over bread," survivors told the Cyprus Mail on Thursday.

"Nearly 40 ships sailed past us, and there was no way they could not have seen us. But no one bothered to rescue us," said Farhad Izzideen Ali, a survivor from the northern Iraqi town of Zakho told the newspaper.

"My children were snatching the small pieces of bread from each other's mouths and fighting over them," Idrees Mohammed Ali, an Iraqi Kurd told the newspaper. "We have seen death and destruction in Iraq, but to see your own child dying from hunger and thirst is something else."

A Limassol court on Monday ordered the ship's captain, Mohammed Mustafa, 31, detained for eight days. The passengers were taken to a Nicosia hotel as Africans and Arabs traded charges that each had attacked the other during the ordeal.

Friday, July 2, 1999



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