Italian authorities charge captain of capsized migrants’ boat

The Tunisian captain of a boat that capsized off Libya on Sunday, killing hundreds of migrants, has been charged with reckless multiple homicide, Italian officials say.

He has also been charged along with a Syrian member of the crew with favouring illegal immigration.

The two were among 27 survivors who arrived in Sicily late on Monday.

The authorities say the disaster was caused by mistakes made by the captain and the ship being overcrowded.

Prosecutors in the Sicilian port of Catania said the boat had collided with a Portuguese container ship just before it capsized, but absolved the merchant vessel's crew of any responsibility.

They said the boat had keeled over after the collision which had been caused by steering mistakes by the captain and the panicked movements of the migrants on the 20-metre (66ft) former fishing trawler.

Carlotta Sami of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy was in Catania to meet the survivors. Some 800 people are thought to have died in the disaster, she said.

There were nationals of Syria, Eritrea, Somalia, Mali, Sierra Leone and Senegal on board, kept in three different layers in the boat.

“They left on Saturday morning around eight o'clock in the morning from Tripoli, and they started to have problems, and they were approached by merchant vessels during the night around 10 o'clock.

At some point, “the little boat lost its balance, and people started to move around. Those that were down wanted to come up and vice-versa, and many people fell into the water, and then the boat capsized,” she said.