Libya Scandal: Officer of the Coast Guard by day and trafficker by night

Abdui Rhaman Milad, called by migrants Bija is the trafficker of men who, according to investigations underway in Agrigento's prosecutors, plays a dual role: officer of the Libyan Coast Guard and trafficker of human beings.

La Repubblica writes, Bija is a torturer, trafficker but also an "institutional interlocutor" in negotiating tables parallel to the Italy-Libya agreements. Bija is the backbone - in his just confirmed role as head of the Zawiya coast guard - of that Libyan SAR area which, from the documents of an investigation by the Agrigento Prosecutor's Office full of international contributions that are not at all obvious (from the IMO, the institute which certifies the Sar zones, to UNHCR) emerges as de facto managed by the Italian Navy.

Strong doubts emerged in the Sicilian investigation as to how the 150 million euros that the Italian government has so far allocated to train and support the Libyan Coast Guard have actually been used.

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The documents were sent to the Roman Prosecutor Prestipino a few days ago when chilling reports of interrogation of five migrants who arrived in Lampedusa in July with the ship Alex di Mediterranea turned on the spotlight on the coast guard officer identified in the same person depicted in the photos published by Avvenire, at the table of a meeting between Libyan and Italian delegations first at Cara di Mineo and then at the headquarters of the Coast Guard in Rome. Interrogation reports that come together in a puzzle together with open sources such as the journalistic inquiries of Avvenire and Espresso and the latest UN report which includes the name of Abdui Rhaman Milad among the criminals who control the trafficking of men from Libya to Europe, the recipient of a mysterious warrant for the arrest of the Libyan judiciary itself which, however, no one dreams of executing while Milad - they tell the headquarters of the Coast Guard in Tripoli - quietly continues to carry out his official work.

And the scene of the story of the five migrants is the detention center of Zawiya, a former military base near the refinery center of huge smuggling trafficking, where a thousand people, including women and children, are locked up, the kingdom of Ossama Milad Rahuma , Bija's cousin.

His victims, who scarcely pronounce the name in terror before the prosecutors, cripple it in "Bengi". But it is he: «He is the man who on the beach of Zawiya selects who leaves and who does not, who decides how many people get on this or that rubber boat». And it is always him then, on the patrol boats of the Libyan Coast Guard, a gift from Italy, who intercepts those same rubber boats, and then brings the migrants back into the concentration camp, new violence, new torture, new blackmail, to obtain from family and friends new money to pay off a new trip. In that center, one of the official ones run by the Libyan police, IOM, the international organization of migration, also has access. And the witnesses pointed their finger at an alleged official of the organization, or at least a man who wore the shirt, who allegedly sold them to traffickers. Accusations that the spokesman Flavio Di Giacomo has flatly denied. And the IOM is the organizer of the meetings, first in Sicily and then Rome, which will bring Bija to Italy as a member of the delegation formally charged with studying the Italian model of organization of reception centers. A sign of the versatility of Bija's relationships.

This investigative work is susceptible to new important developments, announced in September the prosecutor of Agrigento Luigi Patronaggio. But it was the journalistic inquiries that traced the obligatory course of an investigation that now leads to Rome where - if there are any - close agreements would have been made that would go well beyond the Italy-Libya Memorandum. Starting with the actual management of the Libyan SAR in which the role of the Italian Navy would go far beyond that of training and technological support. With what is now much more than a chilling hypothesis: in Rome and Tripoli, emergency calls are answered (or not answered) and given by men of the Italian Navy. The Libyans only sign.

Libya Scandal: Officer of the Coast Guard by day and trafficker by night

| EVIDENCE 3, MONDO |