By Martin Hellicar
MORE than one hundred suspected illegal immigrants were recuperating in a Limassol hotel yesterday after being rescued overnight from a “death” boat found drifting off Cyprus.
Two passengers reportedly died of thirst on the fishing trawler and had been thrown overboard by the time the vessel was found on Sunday.
Eight of the 109 Arabs and African passengers taken off the Syrian-flagged Rita Allah – including four children – were being treated in hospital for the effects of dehydration and exhaustion suffered during their 11-day ordeal at sea, police said.
“Two men aged between 20 and 30 died from lack of food and water and were thrown overboard two days ago. They were stacked in that boat like sardines. This is flesh trade,” Reuters quoted a police source as saying.
The deaths were not confirmed by official police sources but the captain of the vessel, Mohammad Mustafa, was later remanded at Limassol District Court for eight days. Charges will include taking insufficient care of his duties and illegally transporting passengers for money.
One of the passengers, 25-year-old Iraqi Suheib Anwar Saleh, said two African passengers had died of thirst and were thrown into the water. “It was such a small boat and it developed mechanical problems twice,” he said from a Limassol hotel. “We were awake day and night.”
He said the boat, crammed with passengers, was bound for Crete and passengers had paid up to $2,400 for the trip. But Reuters news agency reported survivors as saying that had paid as much as $5,000 to go to either Greece or Italy.
Another source said the passengers had been told they were bound for Italy but said the intention had always been to dump the migrants in Cyprus. Marine experts said the Rita Allah could never have take on enough fuel for the journey to Italy.
The boat, which had been drifting for nine days since its engine failed, was spotted 50 nautical miles south of Paphos by a Ukrainian cargo vessel, the Valerian Zorin, at about 11am on Sunday, said the chief of port police, Theodoros Stylianou. He said two passengers from the Rita Allah jumped overboard on sighting the Valerian Zorin. “It would appear that because these people had been in this small boat for about 10 days they were desperate and when they saw the ship they jumped in to give the alarm,” Stylianou said. One of the swimmers was rescued by the Valerian and the other by the Rita Allah, he said.
The Ukrainian vessel notified police who sent a coastguard vessel to the scene.
“The people on the boat were in a bad state of health due to dehydration and malnutrition, they had no food or water,” a police spokeswoman said.
The Rita Allah was eventually towed to Limassol port by the Ukrainian vessel and the six Syrian crew and 109 passengers – from Iraq, Syria, Siera Leone, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Rwanda and Congo – were taken off just after 3am yesterday. There were twelve women and eight young children among those rescued.
“Some of them had to be carried off the boat because they were so weak,” a witness said. Other witnesses described how pregnant women and children had to be carried out through a small hole in the deck by police.
Police said the trawler had left Tripoli in Lebanon on June 18 bound for Libya. Its navigation instrument was a compass which was not working properly.
One survivor, David Doe, aged 26, from Rwanda, said: “I took a few biscuits with me but they didn’t last a day. We didn’t have any water, we ran out about five days later. I used my trainers to scoop up sea water to drink. I thought I was going to die.”
Doe said the captain had told him he would “take him to a country of his choice.”
Both the vessel – with the remaining five crew still on it – and the hotel where the passengers were staying were under police guard yesterday. Police said they had not yet worked out what to do about the 109 boat people, but government spokesman Christos Stylianides said the matter would be treated as a “humanitarian” issue and every possible help would be given to them.
It was later reported that one of the dead was Okin Mbasong, aged 23, of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Of ten people in hospital late last night, four were under police guard.
