Yioham tragedy resurfaces

The Italian government has accepted to retrieve the wreck of the 18-metre, Maltese registered boat that sank with some 283 people on board in the 1996 Yioham Christmas eve tragedy, the biggest known migration disaster in the Mediterranean.

The go-ahead was given by Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi following a proposal by Arnold Cassola and Tana de Zulueta, Green MPs in the Italian Parliament.

The initiative follows an appeal made by four Italian Nobel laureates - Dario Fo, Rita Levi Montalcini, Carlo Rubia and Renato Dulbecco - for the recovery and appropriate burial of the immigrants' remains.

The 18-metre wooden fishing launch, which had once been, ironically, an RAF search and rescue vessel, had left Marsaxlokk late on Christmas Eve in 1996 to meet the Yioham some 30 miles off the north east of Malta in inclement weather.

Aboard the Yioham were over 400 immigrants, mainly Pakistanis, Indians and Sri Lankans. The plan was to have the immigrants transferred from the Yioham onto the launch, which would then take the immigrants to shore. There was a collision, however, and the Maltese vessel sank near Porto Palo.

The truth took a long time to surface. For years, the basic facts surrounding the disaster were disputed. In fact, the incident was only revealed in 2001 by La Repubblica journalist Giovanni Maria Bellu, who later wrote a book about the tragedy, I Fantasmi Di Porto Palo, taking issue with the veil of secrecy which surrounded the whole affair. Murder charges were issued against a Pakistani married to a Maltese, Turab Sheikh, the owner of the Maltese vessel and against Youssef al-Hallal, the Lebanese captain of the Yioham. To date nobody has been convicted.

The retrieval of the vessel and the remains of the people aboard is meant to bring some closure particularly to the families of those who perished.

The two MPs were the first signatories of a draft law proposal on this issue last July. Now Prof. Prodi has given the go-ahead for the funding of the expedition to re-float the launch.

"Romano Prodi has recognised the significance of such an operation," Prof. Cassola said in a statement.

"One must not forget that this was the biggest naval disaster in the Mediterranean since the Second World War. While the majority of the 283 victims were Pakistani, there were Maltese citizens among the victims," he said.