Migrants rescued by Trenton reveal: ‘If that boat saw and rescue us before, 76 people would not have died’
Repubblica– On 12 June 2018 the US Navy ship Trenton rescued 41 migrants in the Mediterraneo, off the coast of Libya, from a collapsed rubber boat. But 76 people have been less lucky and died in the shipwreck. After months we met six of the 41 survivors, who for the first time tell what happened that day.
Their memories are dramatic: they saw brothers, girlfriends, pregnant women dying trying desperately to hold what was remaining of the rubber boat . The migrants we met say they saw, that morning, the American military ship long before the dinghy capsized. “We saw that ship, it was not far, we saw the American flag, and if they (The American ship) had seen and rescued us when we were all still on board, 76 people would not die.”
At our request for information on the dynamics of the sighting of the rubber boat, the American Naval Command reiterated that the Trenton ship only saw the boat when it already capsized and the people were floating in the water. But the episode of June 12 is not the only one in which the Trenton ship was found a few miles from a boat of migrants, as evidenced by a radio conversation occurred a few days before in those same waters.
di Fabio Butera
