Tunisian police have arrested four Tunisians, including a fisherman, suspected of maritime piracy for having seized the engines and money from a boat carrying Tunisian migrants who were trying to go to Italy, AFP learned Thursday from a judicial source.
Last Saturday, four people were arrested by the National Guard in Téboulba, near Monastir (east)” after one of the victims broadcast a video on the TikTok network showing the pirates stealing the engine, said Farid Ben Jha, spokesperson for the Monastir court.
Were seized at their home, a dinghy, a motor, and a sum of money of an unspecified amount, added Mr. Ben Jha. They are accused of “criminal association with the aim of attacking people and property”, according to him.
Recent judicial investigations in Italy have shown, according to the Italian agency Ansa, that Tunisian fishermen have retrained in piracy, which turns out to be more lucrative, by plundering the numerous boats that regularly leave the Tunisian coast.
Six Tunisian “pirate fishermen”, aged 30 to 52, were arrested in mid-August on the instructions of the Agrigento prosecutor’s office (southern Italy) for attacking a boat carrying 49 migrants of unspecified origin. , according to Ansa.
The “fishermen” who left Monastir are accused of having stolen the boat’s engine and forced the migrants to give them their money.
At the end of July, another investigation had been opened by the same court, according to Ansa, against four Tunisians arrested for having forced migrants to hand over their mobile phones and their money in exchange for a tow to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, where the majority of migrants arrive from Tunisia.
Nearly 113,000 migrants have landed illegally since the start of the year in Italy, two-thirds coming from Tunisia and the rest from Libya, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Departures of sub-Saharan migrants have increased since the spring and the rise of xenophobic sentiment after a speech in February by President Kais Saied denouncing “hordes” of illegal immigrants coming, according to him, to Tunisia to “change its demographic composition”.
Thousands of Tunisians have also left their country illegally, mired in a serious socio-economic and political crisis since President Saied seized full power in July 2021.
