Tunisian police have arrested four Tunisians, including a fisherman suspected of maritime piracy, for seizing the engines and money from a boat carrying Tunisian migrants heading to Italy, AFP learned from a judicial source on Thursday.
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“Last Saturday, in Téboulba, near Monastir (east), four people were arrested by the National Guard,” after one of the victims posted a video on the TikTok network showing the pirates stealing the engine, said Farid Ben Jha, spokesman for the Court of Monastir.
An inflatable boat, a motor and an unspecified amount of money were confiscated from their house, Mr Ben Jha added. According to him, they are accused of “criminal association with the aim of attacking people and property.”
Recent judicial investigations in Italy have revealed, according to the Italian agency Ansa, that Tunisian fishermen have been retrained for piracy, which is proving more lucrative by plundering the numerous boats that regularly leave the Tunisian coast.
According to Ansa, six Tunisian “pirate fishermen” aged 30 to 52 were arrested in mid-August on the instructions of the public prosecutor’s office in Agrigento (southern Italy) for attacking a boat with 49 migrants of unknown origin.
The “fishermen” who set out from Monastir are accused of stealing the boat’s engine and forcing the migrants to give them their money.
At the end of July, according to Ansa, the same court opened another investigation into four Tunisians who were arrested for forcing migrants to hand over their cell phones and money in exchange for being towed to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, where most of them live Migrants come from Tunisia.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), almost 113,000 migrants have secretly landed in Italy since the beginning of the year, two thirds of them from Tunisia and the rest from Libya.
The exodus of migrants from sub-Saharan countries has increased since the spring and the rise of xenophobic sentiment after President Kais Saied, in a speech in February, denounced “hordes” of illegal immigrants who he said were coming to Tunisia to “extend its demographic composition.” to change”.
Thousands of Tunisians have also secretly left their country and have been in a serious socio-economic and political crisis since President Saied came to power in July 2021.