According to the Guardian, two men have been arrested and charged in the murder of these 26 women.
The Guardian, Rescued migrants disembark from the Spanish navy ship Cantabria in Salerno, Italy. Photograph: Antonio Masiello/Getty Images
Lorena Ciccotti, police chief in the southern Italian port city of Salerno, told CNN that officials have launched an investigation into the girls’ cause of the death to see if they had been tortured or sexually assaulted. Autopsies on the bodies should be completed over the next week. Officials believe the 26 girls, who are all Nigerian and range from 14 to 18 years old, died attempting the dangerous journey from Libya to Europe over the weekend.
The girls’ bodies were found in the Mediterranean by a Spanish vessel, which lowered a “seemingly endless line of black plastic body bags” onto a port in Salerno, according to Agence France-Presse.
CNN, The Spanish vessel Calabria arrives in the harbor Sunday
Libya is a well-known jumping-off point for migrants seeking refuge on European shores, according to CNN. Many from sub-Saharan Africa, are fleeing war and persecution; others from impoverished nations in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia have made the treacherous journey in search of better economic opportunities.
The men arrested have been named as Al Mabrouc Wisam Harar, from Libya, and Egyptian Mohamed Ali Al Bouzid. The pair are believed to have skippered one of the boats. They were identified by survivors who were among the 375 brought to Salerno by Cantabria. The two men are accused of organising and trafficking at least 150 people on the two sunken boats, but prosecutors have not made a direct link between the two men and the women’s deaths, said Rosa Maria Falasca, chief of staff at Salerno’s prefecture.
The Guardian also reports that the over 2,560 migrants saved over four days, and that people still continue to attempt the crossing despite a pact between Italy and Libya to stem the flow, which led to a drop in arrivals by almost 70% since the summer
The prefect of Salerno, Salvatore Malfi, told the Italian press that the women had been travelling alongside men and when the vessels sank, “unfortunately, the women suffered the worst of it”.
But in response to concerns that the women were being trafficked for the sex trade, he added: “Sex trafficking routes are different, with different dynamics used. Loading women on to a boat is too risky for the traffickers, as they could risk losing all of their ‘goods’ – as they like to call them – in one fell swoop.”
The trip across the Mediterranean is deadly — about 58 percent of the refugees who have died this year during their cross-border migration have drowned in the Mediterranean, according to the International Organization for Migration.