Athens (EFE). – The Greek Prosecutor’s Office has ordered preventive detention for the nine accused of human trafficking for the sinking, last week, of a ship with hundreds of people on board, of which 82 bodies have so far been recovered.
After declaring for 13 hours, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Greek city of Kalamata issued preventive detention for the nine men, of Egyptian nationality, accused of smuggling migrants, causing a shipwreck, negligent homicide and endangering lives at the last minute yesterday.
According to the Hellenic newspaper Efsyn, the nine defendants, who were located among the 104 people rescued from the shipwreck, have denied belonging to a human trafficking network and declared that they had paid like the rest of the migrants to make the trip on the crowded fishing boat. .
One of the biggest tragedies in the Mediterranean
A spokesman for the Coast Guard has informed EFE that among those rescued are 43 Egyptians, 47 Syrians, 12 Pakistanis and two Palestinians.
According to the testimonies of those rescued, some 700 people, half of them Pakistani citizens, were traveling on the crowded ship, including many children and women, whose shipwreck has become one of the greatest tragedies recorded in the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, search operations continue in the southwest of the Peloponnese peninsula, where the ship sank last Wednesday morning, with no possibility of finding anyone alive.
The authorities recovered one more body yesterday in the area, so the official death toll is now 82.
For its part, public television ERT reported that the boat left Egypt, made a stopover in eastern Libya, where the migrants boarded, and then continued on to Italy.