A toll that worsens tragically, that of last Sunday's shipwreck on the beach of Steccato di Cutro: in fact, the number of victims rises to 70, with the last two findings this morning. And, even more dramatic, it is two children. A little while ago, Adnkronos learns, the body of a child was found in Botricello, near Steccato (where the boat crashed into a shoal). His age is unknown. His little body will soon be taken to the funeral home for possible recognition.
This morning the Fire Department had found another. The body was on the shore where, according to what is hypothesized, it had recently been brought from the sea. He was the 15th child found dead. 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 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 smugglers and the crash of the gulet on the shoal, which 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, which spoke of a boat 40 miles from the coast, and thus ascertain what decisions were taken and whether there were criminal flaws in the rescue chain. Prime Minister Meloni, a short while ago from Abu Dhabi, specified that the European agency "has not received emergency indications".
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, on whose line - as mentioned above - the President of the Council also attested. And the coast guard does not move before "because the sea conditions worsened later, just before the shipwreck," Mantovano said.
Then the undersecretary 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 picked up 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", concluded the undersecretary.