Yahoo – AFP,
January 3, 2015
Geneva (AFP) - People smugglers likely raked in more than $1.0 million from the hundreds of desperate migrants crammed into just one of the "ghost ships" abandoned off the coast of Italy this week, the International Organization for Migration said Friday.
Traffickers grossed over $1.0 mn on single ghost ship : IOM |
Geneva (AFP) - People smugglers likely raked in more than $1.0 million from the hundreds of desperate migrants crammed into just one of the "ghost ships" abandoned off the coast of Italy this week, the International Organization for Migration said Friday.
"Our
reports are of payments of $1,000 to 2,000 per person leaving Syria and
attempting to sail from Turkey," IOM spokesman Joel Millman told AFP.
That means
that traffickers likely took well above $1.0 million on each of the large,
crewless ships crowded with migrants intercepted off Italy in recent days, he
said.
That is
"enough revenue to pay for a disposable craft, crew, vessels to evacuate
the crew and, presumably, make any bribe payments that might have been useful
in furthering the scheme," Millman added.
Italian sailors
on Friday managed to take control of a crewless merchant ship drifting in rough
seas with 450 migrants on board.
That was
the second in two days after the Moldovan-registered Blue Sky M ship was
abandoned Wednesday by smugglers who set it on autopilot toward Italy's rocky
shores with nearly 800 migrants aboard.
More than
170,000 people have been rescued by Italy in the last 14 months and hundreds,
possibly thousands, have perished trying to make the crossing.
Millman
said the smugglers have recently begun using large cargo ships, rather than
smaller boats, as well as turned to moving more "homogenous" groups
of passengers, with the Blue Sky M filled almost exclusively with Syrians.
The UN
refugee agency also voiced concern Friday at the move towards using large
freighters and called on European governments to do more to help Italy respond
to flood of migrants landing on its shores.
"We
need urgent European concerted action in the Mediterranean Sea, increasing
efforts to rescue people at sea and stepping up efforts to provide legal
alternatives to dangerous voyages," Vincent Cochetel, head of UNHCR's
European bureau, said in a statement.
But with
entire villages and towns frantically trying to escape the bloody civil war in
Syria, traffickers have found a particularly lucrative niche, Miller said.
The
smugglers, Millman warned, could be "getting used to handling a flow of
migrants they can predict will run into the thousands of individuals every
month."
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The Ezadeen
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'Ghost ship' migrants arrive safety in Italy
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