A Tragedy in Italy

How the terrible case of Lucia Annibali had an unexpected impact on our investigation.

On April 16, 2013 in the town of Pesaro, Italy, two men attacked a young lawyer called Lucia Annibali, throwing sulfuric acid in her face. Police later discovered that her boyfriend, Luca Varani, had hired the assailants—he later claimed it was a prank gone awry, but in fact he had made another woman pregnant, and Annibali, who found out about the affair, was planning to leave him.

The attack left Annibali’s face heavily scarred, even after a string of reconstructive surgeries, and turned her into a leading figure in the campaign against violence toward women in Italy.

A year after the attack, an Italian court sentenced Varani to 20 years in prison for attempted murder, while the two attackers each received 14 years for their part in the assault.

What does this heinous crime have to do with the disappearance of 243 refugees attempting to reach safety in Europe?

Nothing. Or at least that was the answer until the first week of February.

That’s when an interview with Varani, taped in prison, aired on national TV in Italy. The interview angered many viewers—but particularly Manfredi Palumbo, the prosecuting attorney in Varani’s case.

The broadcast, the prosecutor argued, violated criminal procedure. Varani’s original case may have played out, but it is now in the appeal process and, Palumbo said, should be considered as an ongoing legal proceeding. That means any statement about the case by Varani should have been given to the director of the prison where he is serving his sentence — not to the public.

“TV can’t replace the prison director,” said Palumbo, pointing a finger at the external relations office of the Department of Penitentiary Administration for authorizing the interview.

Our request to interview Measho Tesfamariam, the Ghost Boat smuggler who is in prison in Catania, arrived on the desk of the same office the week it became embroiled in scandal over the Varani interview. What was supposed to be the last rubber stamp on five other authorizations secured over the course of the past three months turned into the end of the road.

We can’t say for sure that it was because of the Varani scandal, but the duty director of the Department of Penitentiary Administration personally wrote us a letter rejecting our request. He told us the grounds for such a decision: Measho’s case is an ongoing legal proceeding — the same argument the prosecutor used to say the Varani interview shouldn’t have happened.

On December 22 last year, Measho was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison and a €300,000 fine for his smuggling activities. Under Italian law, he has the right to appeal the sentence twice. The process could take months if not years. As things stand now, we won’t be given access to speak with him until it is complete.

To say we are disappointed after three months of waiting is an understatement. We don’t know what information Measho has that could help us solve the mystery of the Ghost Boat. But we do know that he is one of the last people to have interacted with the 243 passengers before they disappeared. Losing access to him means losing access to potentially critical information.

Like other times we have experienced setbacks in our reporting, we are not content to simply accept this outcome as final. There is too much on the line.

We are drafting a letter to the deputy director of the Department of Penitentiary Administration asking him to reconsider our request. At the same time, we are exploring possible ways to communicate with Measho that don’t involve meeting him face to face.

It’s still too early to tell if either of these will prove successful, but the only thing we can do is try. In the meantime, we’ll keep you posted on our progress.

On other fronts, we are doubling down on our effort to leverage the data we have collected over the course of the investigation. Looking at the information we have and the information that we may still be able to access through reporting, we are closing in on creating a theoretical model of the Ghost Boat’s path — assuming that it ever left shore. We then hope to scour satellite imagery for evidence any evidence. We are reaching out for experts to help with this process.

In the meantime, Mohamed Lagha is still at work on the ground in Libya. And I’m working on reporting the broader context of missing people in the Mediterranean.

This isn’t the news that we wanted to be sharing with you at this point. And it is certainly a far cry from the early days of the investigation when we were making such lightning-fast progress. But the heart of this story has always been the desire to find an answer for the families whose loved ones are missing — or at least chase it until we find out that it may not be possible to come up with a definitive answer.

Until we reach one of those two possible conclusions, we remain dedicated to the search.

Onward.