Two high-ranking Italian officials charged with manslaughter for sinking migrant ship in 2013

News24xx.com -  A judge in Rome has indicted two high-ranking Italian officials for their alleged role in the deaths of hundreds of refugees who tried to reach Italy by boat.

Some 268 people, including at least 60 children, died in the Mediterranean Sea on October 11, 2013, after Italian and Maltese authorities allegedly waited hours to respond to emergency calls as their vessel slowly sank.

The disaster was one of the deadliest migrant shipwrecks since Europe's asylum-seeker crisis began in 2011.

Nearly six years after the disaster, Leopoldo Manna of the Italian coastguard and Luca Licciardi of its navy face multiple charges of manslaughter and negligence.

The men's trial is the most prominent active case in which Italian courts seek to find out who is responsible for the deaths of refugees who try to reach Italy by sea.

The trial will establish whether the two officials delayed launching rescue operations and whether any delays caused the deaths of the passengers.

"No trial is ever going to bring the dead back to life," Arturo Salerni, the lawyer of the victims' relatives, told.

"But for the families, reconstructing those terrible hours in which the boat took in water and their calls went unanswered is a form of justice."

He said the victims' families hoped to see punishment for the two officials and reparations for their loss.

 

 

 

NEWS24XX.COM/DEV/RED