PACHINO, SICILY // All migrant Marc Samie has of his wife is a picture in his mind. Louise, seven and a half months pregnant, is standing silently on a beach in Libya, tears rolling down her face as traffickers force him at gunpoint into a rubber dinghy with a compass.
The armed men had ordered Mr Samie to hold the compass and a satellite phone for navigation on the journey to Italy, but he refused. So they fired a Kalashnikov at the ground between his legs, and told him to take the compass or they would kill the couple. They said his wife would be on the next boat.
That was last July, and Mr Samie hasn’t laid eyes on her since. But instead of being treated as a victim in Italy, he was arrested by police and charged with facilitating illegal immigration.
Mr Samie, a 21-year-old from Togo, is one of hundreds of migrants who are caught up in the Italian legal system as police, prosecutors and judges struggle to combat human trafficking. They are the victims of an increasingly-used tactic where professional smugglers avoid being caught by forcing migrants, many of them minors, to take the helm of the boats.
Almost every day, Italian officials detain men accused of driving the boats, but don’t know if they are traffickers or migrants. While overall numbers are not available, 179 smugglers – 26 of them minors – were detained this year at the port of Pozzallo alone, where Mr Samie came in. That compares to 147 last year.
In another port, Augusta, more than 190 smugglers have been arrested so far this year, according to police. And in Catania district, trafficking arrests have risen dramatically from 13 in 2013 to 79 as of August.
Police are well aware that they aren’t reaching the criminals behind the trafficking who are reaping the profits. To date, Italian police haven’t obtained the arrest of a single trafficker in Libya, said Andrea Bonomo, deputy prosecutor for Catania.
“[We are] making the arrests at what I would define as the lowest level, the so-called smugglers, the ones who drive the boats and who are often migrants,” he said. “They risk their lives together with the others.”
There are no numbers on convictions. But smugglers can get five to 15 years in prison, Mr Bonomo added.
On September 7, Gigi Modica, a judge in Palermo threw out the case against two accused smugglers, a Somali and a Gambian. The men were driving and holding the compass on a rubber dinghy with 118 migrants on board. A dozen passengers died, and the men were accused of multiple manslaughter.
Mr Modica concluded that the two presumed smugglers were actually migrants, forced by armed Libyans to drive the boat. In his statement, he wrote that they had been threatened with death, and ordered them to be freed immediately.
The judge said Libyan traffickers are choosing sub-Saharan Africans to drive the boats and take the compasses. He said defendants had told of friends being killed by traffickers because they refused to lead the boats.
Mr Samie spent 15 days in jail before he was asked to sign an expulsion order. He then headed back to the port in search of news of his wife, but there was nothing.
He is now appealing his expulsion order. In the meantime, he has sent off various emails to organisations, looking for Louise. He has no idea if she is alive or gave birth to their baby.
“The last time I saw her, she cried,” he said. “I just said to her, we’ll meet here ... I will wait for her.”
* Associated Press
All We Imagine as Light
Director: Payal Kapadia
Starring: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam
Rating: 4/5
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Name: Ejari
Based: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Founders: Yazeed Al Shamsi, Fahad Albedah, Mohammed Alkhelewy and Khalid Almunif
Sector: PropTech
Total funding: $1 million
Investors: Sanabil 500 Mena, Hambro Perks' Oryx Fund and angel investors
Number of employees: 8
Company Profile
Name: Direct Debit System
Started: Sept 2017
Based: UAE with a subsidiary in the UK
Industry: FinTech
Funding: Undisclosed
Investors: Elaine Jones
Number of employees: 8
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Haltia.ai
Started: 2023
Co-founders: Arto Bendiken and Talal Thabet
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: AI
Number of employees: 41
Funding: About $1.7 million
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Director: Sudha Kongara Prasad
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The years Ramadan fell in May
Forced Deportations
While the Lebanese government has deported a number of refugees back to Syria since 2011, the latest round is the first en-mass campaign of its kind, say the Access Center for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization which monitors the conditions of Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
“In the past, the Lebanese General Security was responsible for the forced deportation operations of refugees, after forcing them to sign papers stating that they wished to return to Syria of their own free will. Now, the Lebanese army, specifically military intelligence, is responsible for the security operation,” said Mohammad Hasan, head of ACHR.
In just the first four months of 2023 the number of forced deportations is nearly double that of the entirety of 2022.
Since the beginning of 2023, ACHR has reported 407 forced deportations – 200 of which occurred in April alone.
In comparison, just 154 people were forcfully deported in 2022.
Violence
Instances of violence against Syrian refugees are not uncommon.
Just last month, security camera footage of men violently attacking and stabbing an employee at a mini-market went viral. The store’s employees had engaged in a verbal altercation with the men who had come to enforce an order to shutter shops, following the announcement of a municipal curfew for Syrian refugees.
“They thought they were Syrian,” said the mayor of the Nahr el Bared municipality, Charbel Bou Raad, of the attackers.
It later emerged the beaten employees were Lebanese. But the video was an exemplary instance of violence at a time when anti-Syrian rhetoric is particularly heated as Lebanese politicians call for the return of Syrian refugees to Syria.
Company profile
Company name: Fasset
Started: 2019
Founders: Mohammad Raafi Hossain, Daniel Ahmed
Based: Dubai
Sector: FinTech
Initial investment: $2.45 million
Current number of staff: 86
Investment stage: Pre-series B
Investors: Investcorp, Liberty City Ventures, Fatima Gobi Ventures, Primal Capital, Wealthwell Ventures, FHS Capital, VN2 Capital, local family offices
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335 million people positively impacted by projects
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Author: Abdullah Khan
Publisher: Penguin Random House
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Company profile
Company name: Hayvn
Started: 2018
Founders: Christopher Flinos, Ahmed Ismail
Based: Abu Dhabi, UAE
Sector: financial
Initial investment: undisclosed
Size: 44 employees
Investment stage: series B in the second half of 2023
Investors: Hilbert Capital, Red Acre Ventures
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Gold
Magomedomar Magomedomarov – Judo – Men’s +100kg
Khaled Al Shehi – Jiu-jitsu – Men’s -62kg
Faisal Al Ketbi – Jiu-jitsu – Men’s -85kg
Asma Al Hosani – Jiu-jitsu – Women’s -52kg
Shamma Al Kalbani – Jiu-jitsu – Women’s -63kg
Silver
Omar Al Marzooqi – Equestrian – Individual showjumping
Bishrelt Khorloodoi – Judo – Women’s -52kg
Khalid Al Blooshi – Jiu-jitsu – Men’s -62kg
Mohamed Al Suwaidi – Jiu-jitsu – Men’s -69kg
Balqees Abdulla – Jiu-jitsu – Women’s -48kg
Bronze
Hawraa Alajmi – Karate – Women’s kumite -50kg
Ahmed Al Mansoori – Cycling – Men’s omnium
Abdullah Al Marri – Equestrian – Individual showjumping
Team UAE – Equestrian – Team showjumping
Dzhafar Kostoev – Judo – Men’s -100kg
Narmandakh Bayanmunkh – Judo – Men’s -66kg
Grigorian Aram – Judo – Men’s -90kg
Mahdi Al Awlaqi – Jiu-jitsu – Men’s -77kg
Saeed Al Kubaisi – Jiu-jitsu – Men’s -85kg
Shamsa Al Ameri – Jiu-jitsu – Women’s -57kg
Company Profile
Company name: Yeepeey
Started: Soft launch in November, 2020
Founders: Sagar Chandiramani, Jatin Sharma and Monish Chandiramani
Based: Dubai
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Everton 2 Huddersfield Town 0
Everton: Sigurdsson (47'), Calvert-Lewin (73')
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Director: S.J. Clarkson
Starring: Dakota Johnson, Tahar Rahim, Sydney Sweeney
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