Montreal Gazette ePaper

STOLEN YACHTS LITTER END OF MIGRANT PATH

The Daily Telegraph

They were once the kind of sleek, white-hulled yachts that can be seen in any marina in the Mediterranean, but these boats are battered and scratched, their masts are snapped, and they are piled up on a concrete jetty in a port on the coast of Calabria, the toe of the bootshaped Italian peninsula.

They were impounded after being used by traffickers to bring refugees and migrants from Turkey, on a new route that has seen a dramatic increase in numbers in the past few weeks.

So far this year, almost 10,000 people have reached the shores of Calabria — a fourfold increase from last year and a fivefold increase on 2019. Italy as a whole has received more than 58,000 migrant arrivals this year, compared with 32,000 last year and 10,000 in 2019.

The advantage of using yachts, which are believed to be stolen, is that they are hard to identify as smuggling vessels.

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2021-12-02T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-12-02T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://montrealgazette.pressreader.com/article/283592403606414

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