For a long time now, there has been an ongoing press campaign among Italian political parties, which in the pages of newspapers manages to mix politics with gossip. To add further fuel to the controversies, in the last few days new topics have been added, focusing on the Italian government's relations with the Vatican and with Muammar Gaddafi, Silvio Berlusconi's visit to Libya and the Maltese maritime squadron.
It goes without saying that one of the main subjects of debate is the desperate plight of illegal immigrants crossing over by sea from Libya to Sicily. That the problem of illegal immigration cannot be solved at sea is an opinion shared by all men of the sea and of goodwill but it is equally true that this authentic drama is being further exploited to harm the various institutional relations between the governments of the countries involved.
In this complex relationship between the institutions of the countries involved in this human trafficking has now also been added, according to the Italian news magazine L'Espresso, a Maltese "phantom vessel". According to the writer of the feature, "for some time now the Maltese armed forces have equipped a boat to come to the aid of those attempting the crossing from Libya", without specifying whether this information came from Italian or Maltese intelligence sources. In other words, it is about "a phantom fishing vessel, flying no flag and no distinguishing marks", which "boards the ramshackle boats carrying Eritrean survivors, who are dying of thirst. The sailors all speak English. They do not wear uniforms but do not seem to be fishermen".
The reporting of this mysterious unmarked seacraft seems to have first been made by the five survivors of the umpteenth tragedy at sea. It is quite possible that this could have been the result of an interpretation of a difficult sea rescue but what is not surprising is the blowing up of what in effect seems to be a mysterious, unreliable "story" to create further tension between Italy and Malta.
At the command headquarters of the Italian air and naval forces, which operate in the area concerned, they strongly deny that there could be any phantom "fishing boat", adding that all the documentation in their possession, including aerial photographs, on the behaviour of the Maltese patrol boats have been placed at the disposal of the inquiring magistrates. Meanwhile, the Agrigento magistrate has listed three of the five Eritrean survivors among those being investigated; they have declared that they had received fuel from a "Maltese patrol boat", which told them to continue on their way to Lampedusa.
In certain Italian quarters outrage has been expressed at the presumed lack of sensitivity of the Italian and Maltese governments and some have even questioned the fact that Catholic sensibilities have been ignored by Prime Minister Berlusconi and strenuously defended by Catholic newspapers.
However, Gian Vian, the editor of the official Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano, has felt the need to state that "relations between both sides of the Tiber are excellent, as has been confirmed a number of times... In other words, nothing has changed in the relations between the Italian government and the Holy See".
What has happened and what is happening in the Sicilian Channel on board naval craft is creating a complex accumulation of international responsibilities through the decisions of commanding officers which have been taken and must be taken once illegal immigrants are sighted. There is a lot of human trafficking taking place in the sea surrounding Malta and the rescuing of illegal immigrants by civilian vessels can be liable to the charge of aiding and abetting illegal immigration, which is a crime in Italy.
There it is up to naval units to carry out their duty to rescue illegal immigrants who have been abandoned at sea. It is a difficult task for military sea patrols, which should, above all, prove to be a deterrent to arms trafficking in that "triangle" that historically has been defended by the forts of St Elmo in Malta, Lipari in Italy and La Goulette in Tunisia.
Last May, Italian and Libyan patrol boats started joint patrols along the Libyan coast and ports as provided for in a protocol signed by the Italian and Libyan governments with the aim of stopping ramshackle boats packed with illegal immigrants from leaving Libya. Besides the patrolling of the Libyan coast, Italian naval units carry out surveillance of the Sicilian Channel and of fishing in the "Mammellone" sea bank, south-west of Lampedusa, which is traditionally considered a breeding ground and where fishing is therefore prohibited.
To this one has to add the normal surveillance carried out by patrol boats of the Italian coastguard and Customs police in the territorial waters around Lampedusa and the patrolling by the Maltese armed forces outside Grand Harbour.
There is also the coordination of operations by Frontex, the agency set up to oversee the surveillance of the frontiers of the European Union. This agency has been in operation since 2005 and provides the necessary technical support in controlling the borders of the EU, coordinating operations between member states.
Little or nothing escapes the rigorous control of sea traffic in the various operations rooms, to which one must add the normal air traffic control; but one can argue that, in this media campaign carried out on the backs of illegal immigrants, one also has to consider the request of European countries, which are not Mediterranean states, to take over the command of Frontex.
The Maltese armed forces are responsible for a huge search and rescue area, which reaches both the Italian territorial waters and those of Libya and Greece. However, the bulk of illegal immigration takes place near Lampedusa and not near Greece and, in the words of a senior officer of the Italian Customs police, "the men of the Maltese maritime squadron carry out their duties in such an open manner that they certainly have no need to use a phantom fishing boat". "How can you blame the Italian Foreign Ministry," the editor of L'Osservatore Romano commented, "when it recalls that the Italian government has rescued the largest number of illegal immigrants, whereas others, such as the Spanish government, usually take a much tougher line?"
After what happened recently, when a dinghy with 75 illegal immigrants on board was turned back to Libya, there seems to be a tougher attitude by the Italian government towards illegal immigration which, it bears repeating, is organised by a powerful criminal network, which is certainly not humanitarian, and which requires decisive action by the EU.
Many of these illegal immigrants come from West Africa - Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria and Ivory Coast - or from the Horn of Africa: Somalia and Eritrea. They are not refugees but desperate men and women at the mercy of a criminal organisation, which then abandons them to their fate at sea for them to be rescued by men of the sea who have never failed to realise that that there could be anything as important as the sea.
The seamen are the protagonists of that culture which leads, in any case, to the "rescue" of the ship with its precious cargo of men and goods. It is a culture which has little in common with the use of a "Maltese phantom vessel", which does not exist and which, being unmarked, would immediately be sunk or used by the Italian government as the main evidence to show the world and the European Union the existence, in that stretch of sea, of a crew of "sailors who speak English".
Mr Gurioli is an Italian journalist who specialises in maritime and communications affairs and has authored a number of books dealing with life at sea.