Accused acquitted in Italy

An Italian court has acquitted a Pakistani who was extradited from Malta last October to face charges in connection with the 1996 Christmas Day tragedy, when about 300 illegal immigrants on board a Maltese registered launch drowned in the Malta-Sicily channel.

Turab Ahmed Sheikh, who is married to a Maltese, faced charges of involuntary homicide and ferrying immigrants illegally.

Fresh charges could be brought against him, sources said yesterday.

Sheikh, currently in Italy, is due to appear in court in connection with the new charges on July 8 but the sources said his whereabouts since his acquittal were unknown.

Maltese courts last year had ruled there was sufficient reason to extradite Sheikh to Italy in connection with the Yioham tragedy.

Magistrate Joe Cassar had ruled that Sheikh should be extradited to face charges of involuntary homicide and the illegal ferrying of immigrants.

The Italians had been seeking extradition to prosecute him for involuntary homicide, shipwreck, conspiracy and human trafficking.

But the Maltese court had ruled that some of the charges were not extraditable offences under Maltese law.

In late December, 1996, Asian immigrants had surfaced in Greece saying they were survivors of the tragedy and that they had been ferried to the Yioham from Mediterranean countries with the understanding that they would be dropped off in Sicily.

The Yioham met a small wooden boat in international waters some time between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and started offloading the immigrants onto it. The boat could only take about 100 people but some 300 were forced off the Yioham, allegedly at gun point.

In the turmoil, some of the immigrants fell overboard and drowned. The Yioham and the small boat then collided and the boat went down with all its passengers.

About 300 people perished but none of the bodies was recovered despite a search coordinated by Italian and Maltese rescuers which lasted until January 6 the following year.

Investigations revealed that the boat was the Maltese-registered P174, an 18-metre wooden fishing launch which was formerly an RAF search and rescue vessel.

It had left Marsaxlokk late on Christmas Eve in rough weather, possibly with some 50 immigrants it had picked up in Xghajra Bay, Zabbar, to meet the Honduran-registered Yioham some 30 miles off the north east of Malta.

When Sheikh was arrested later, he had told the police that he had originally planned to accompany two men on a launch to transport illegal immigrants but had then changed his mind because of bad weather.

He released a statement saying he had seen the weather report on the teletext and decided not to go with the two missing men. However, he had kept radio contact via a VHF radio but eventually lost contact.

The survivors who turned up in Greece were described as illegal immigrants who were still aboard the Yioham when the Maltese launch went down.

Occasional claims that the tragedy never took place, since no bodies or wreckage were found, were silenced last summer when the Italian newspaper La Repubblica announced it had located the P174 after a remote-controlled camera filmed the wreck littered with human remains at a depth of 108 metres, some 19 kilometres south of Portopalo.

The seabed close to the wreck was littered with shoes, jeans, bags, bones and other debris.

Maltese police sources had confirmed that Italian police had been given information as well as a map with details about where they should search for the missing fishing boat.

After being extradited, Sheikh had spent about two months in the Rebbibbia jail in Rome and was recently transferred to Syracuse for his trial.