“We are still waiting to receive some news regarding the fishing boat ‘Twenty three’. At the moment we don’t know anything and we still haven’t’ managed to contact the Italian embassy in Tunis and the Italian consulate in Sfax”. This is what Matteo Asaro, the ship’s owner with his brothers Cosimo and Vicenzo, said. The fishing boat was kidnapped on Monday night by the Tunisian soldiers with ten members of the crew, 6 from Mazara Del Vallo and 4 immigrants from Tunis but resident in Mazara Del Vallo.

“This morning we still haven’t managed to contact the crew – said Asaro – our last contact was yesterday at 1.00 p.m. We hope diplomacy will solve the situation and the fishing boat returns home”. The province of Trapani urged the intervention of the Foreign Office with Minister Franco Frattini. According to local administrators, “the boat kidnapping is only one of the many problems of the fishing activity in the channel between Sicily and Africa”.

The council of the province of Trapani hopes that “the crew is released as soon as possible”, with the help of Minister Frattini “but also with the solution on a diplomatic and government level of the 40-year-old fishing war in the Mediterranean sea”.

Translated by Chiara Nunnari from John Milton Institute