Maltese fishermen sympathise with Sicilian colleagues who were fined for fishing illegally, saying first-time offenders should be let off with a warning.
Salvatore Saporito, 29, and Salvatore Penna, 52, were fined €20,000 each after admitting to catching less than €700 worth of prawns and hake in Maltese waters at the beginning of this month.
“Nobody is above the law but, as a fishing community, we agree that it would be more sensible to give a warning to first-time offenders,” said National Fisheries Cooperative general secretary, Raymond Bugeja.
“It is very hard for a fisherman to pay €20,000. This is his income for three years,” Mr Bugeja said.
He referred to previous cases when the Italian authorities had let off Maltese fishermen with just a warning after committing the same offence in waters around Lampedusa.
“We fishermen get along with the Italians. They work near us and we know how tough it would be to pay a fine of €20,000.”
Mr Penna, aboard La Madonnina, and Mr Saporito, on La Principessa Prima, were caught separately on the morning of August 1, a Thursday, and escorted to Malta by the armed forces.
They were forced to remain over the weekend because the office where they had to settle the fine had closed by the time the court hearing ended at 12.30pm on August 2.
Times of Malta contacted Mr Bugeja after an article appeared in Il Giornale di Ragusa last Sunday reporting that the crew of La Madonnina were innocent, saying they only admitted guilt so they could leave Malta.
Mr Bugeja said one of the reasons why first-time offenders should be given a warning was that long fishing lines could drift into Maltese waters without the Sicilians realising it.
Malta has a 25-mile fisheries management zone, which was negotiated during EU accession talks. It is ostensibly for conservation purposes and only vessels up to 12 metres long can fish in it.
Mr Bugeja said that Sicilian and other EU fishermen who satisfied the conditions of the 25-mile zone could be allowed by the Maltese authorities to fish within it, although this had never happened since Malta joined the EU.
In principle, EU states retain exclusive fishing rights up to 12 nautical miles from the coast, the fishermen note.
The crew of La Madonnina also told the Ragusa newspaper that Sicilian fishermen were usually the ones ordered to attend to vessels in distress carrying irregular migrants and were sometimes instructed to enter Maltese territorial waters to provide help. According to the Sicilian fishermen, AFM patrol boats watched from afar and sometimes “pushed back” the migrants.
However, an AFM spokesman said patrol boats did not “push back” irregular migrants or force them out of Maltese waters under any circumstances.
All vessels, regardless of whether they belonged to a State or were commercial vessels, had an obligation to assist persons in distress at sea, the AFM said. Such obligation derives from article 98(1) of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The AFM spokesman added that the Malta Rescue Coordination Centre had not asked any Sicilian fishing vessel to render assistance over the past three months.
Mr Bugeja said it sometimes took too long for the authorities to rescue irregular migrants after they had sent a fishing vessel to provide assistance. “It could be there are some fishermen, Italian or Maltese, who may think about not reporting cases [concerning irregular migrants] knowing they will end up waiting a whole day for the authorities to arrive. I hope that is not the case,” he said.