"I evaluated the possibility of holding" a Council of Ministers "in Cutro on immigration" says Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni contesting the thesis that "Meloni escapes. The institutions were also present in expressing their condolences. Now the step is to give answers. I discussed meeting the Council of Ministers" in Cutro "to give a concrete signal", he reiterates.
About the invitation of the mayor of Crotone to go to those places "if not as premier as a mother", the premier replied: "I have not read the letter from the mayor of Crotone. I can only say that I was struck by the reconstructions of these days. But really, recklessness, is there anyone who believes that the government deliberately killed 60 people? I ask you if anyone thinks that if 60 people could have been saved, we would not have done it. Please, let's be a little serious."
Then Meloni continued: "We are very used to noticing problems when there is a tragedy and instead there are those who talk about it since they are at Palazzo Chigi in general disinterest. I am looking for solutions, Italy cannot solve the issue alone, but to prevent other people from dying, illegal departures must be stopped. One way to honor the death of innocent people is to seek a solution."
And on Frontex communications he explained: "No emergency communication from Frontex reached our authorities, we were not warned that this boat risked sinking."
This morning firefighters found the body of a child who was part of the group of migrants involved in last Sunday's shipwreck in Steccato di Cutro. The body was on the shore where, according to what is hypothesized, it had recently been brought from the sea. This is the 15th child found dead. Thus the official victims of the shipwreck rise to 69, neither the age nor the identity of the child is yet known. According to the first findings, the child would not have been more than 3 years old. The corpse of the child was taken to the Palasport of Crotone for recognition. There are still a dozen bodies without identity.
The Public Prosecutor's Office of Crotone, according to the Gazzetta del Sud, wants to hear the survivors of the shipwreck of February 26 to reconstruct the activity of the smugglers and the crash of the gulet on the shoal that caused the death of migrants and a number of missing estimated between 27 and 47 people including many children. In the next few hours, the prosecutor Pasquale Festa, owner of the file will advance the request for an evidentiary incident to the investigating judge of the Court of Crotone, Michele Ciociola. The goal of the Office headed by prosecutor Giuseppe Capoccia is to crystallize the evidence of survivors' accounts.
At the beginning of next week, probably already on Monday, the delegation to the Carabinieri will be formalized by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Crotone for the acquisition of all the documents relating to the management of the Guardia di Finanza and the Coast Guard of the boat loaded with migrants in order to reconstruct all the phases between the report made by the Frontex plane until the moment of the tragic crash. The Public Prosecutor's Office intends to clarify what decisions were taken after the Frontex report of 23.03 on Saturday 25, of a boat 40 miles from the Calabrian coast and thus ascertain what decisions were taken and if there were criminal flaws in the rescue chain.
Mantovano: "Madness to say that we have not done what was due"
"From the reconstruction, it emerges that no alarm has been launched. And instead for days I have been reading in some newspapers a thesis that basically says: it is you who did not want to save those lives. This, let me tell you, is madness. But have we gone mad?" Alfredo Mantovano, undersecretary to the Prime Minister, in an interview with Repubblica rejects the accusations against the government on the shipwreck of Crotone. "The point - continues Mantovano responding to a note on the words of Minister Piantedosi - is not whether I would have said more or less what the minister said. The point is not his tone. The question is whether any warning signal has been sounded: as far as I know, no." "Frontex has not sounded any alarm. What does their report say? That there is a boat with a visible person, indicates the possibility that there may be others on board: this is not an alarm, it applies even if it were a normal pleasure boat, otherwise we would have to intervene for each boat", explains the Undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council. And the coast guard does not move before "because the sea conditions worsened later, just before the shipwreck".
Then Mantovano, continues: "That there was no alarm is demonstrated by the fact that the aircraft that collects the photos did not continue to follow that boat after sending the communication": And he also replies to the doubts of the commander of the Coast Guard: "If you know something, tell the magistrates. I think the investigators have collected the papers and are listening to some people."
As for the controversy over the presence or absence of Minister Salvini in Parliament, "whoever intervenes in Parliament will do so for the whole government and taking into account the whole picture", concludes the undersecretary.