What We Know About the Italian Case

November 2 Ghost Boat update

After last week, when the best lead we had — the phone call from a Tunisian jail — turned out to not be what anyone thought, we’ve had to pick ourselves up and keep digging into the mystery of the Ghost Boat. Right now, our attention is turning towards two very direct questions: Did the boat actually leave? And if it did, where might it have ended up?

We’re working with several groups to advance the second question (more on that tomorrow). But answering the first means starting in two places: legal documents and the smuggling group. Last week we asked for help understanding those arrested in Operation Tokhla, and you came through.

This Just In

Cyril Chen did some translation, dug around and discovered contact details for all the lawyers of those accused. Most of the defendants seem to be using the avvocato d’ufficio (AKA the public defender) but some do not.

One reader on the ground in Sicily has been trying to find out more: He says that there is a “huge difference” between those who have a court-appointed lawyer and those who already having a contact to call as soon as they get in trouble. Another reader, a lawyer who works in the Hague, points out that Italian courts — unlike many others — do not have a duty to disclose material or evidence to the public, so we may not get a lot more documentation any time soon. Worth knowing. We’re trying to get access to whatever we can.

Further Reading

There’s a fascinating event going on in Rome right now — and for the next two weeks — which has a ton of overlap with what we’re doing. It’s called the 19 Million Project, and it’s “a coalition of journalists, coders, designers, digital strategists, and global citizens… committed to finding innovative ways to amplify the narrative around this human rights crisis.”

If you’re reading this update from Ghost Boat, the chances are what they are doing is probably pretty up your street. Here’s their Twitter.

Yafet’s Story

Last time we left off when Segen had moved to Khartoum to live with her sister, but had stopped answering Yafet’s messages.

Yafet started calling Segen’s sister — but she would always say that Segen was at work. One day, he got fed up: He had been waiting for two years to see Segen again.

“What happened to Segen? Why don’t you tell me?” he remembers yelling into the phone.

Her sister told Yafet that she was getting married to a Pentecostal man who lives in Britain. “She told me that the only option I had was to forget her,” Yafet said. “I was really angry and I shouted at her, but nothing.”

Then, at the end of 2010, Yafet met an Eritrean man who said that Segen went to bible study every every Monday at his church.

The following Monday, Yafet went there. When he saw Segen there for the first time in more than two years he was overcome. “I didn’t get the courage to speak,” he remembers. “I felt angry because her sister said she wasn’t mine anymore. I was happy because she was looking good, but I was feeling that she isn’t mine. She’s somebody else’s.”

When Segen saw Yafet, she came running up to him. “She was just crying and hugging me. She wasn’t able to say even a word to me… just crying.”

When the pastor saw their reunion, he kicked them out. Yafet went home and thought things over.

“I spent all night just thinking about her and how she looked. She looked more beautiful than before… How could we be together?”.

In the morning before he left for work, Yafet received a phone call from a strange number. “When I answered, it was Segen,” Yafet said. “I remembered her voice well.”

Segen explained: Her sister and the pastor had prevented her from getting in touch with him. They had told her he was jobless, homeless and a drunk. Segen also told Yafet that she wasn’t actually engaged. “Her sister told that to me in order for me to lose hope,” Yafet said. “[But,] I hadn’t ever stopped thinking about her.”

They started seeing each other in secret. Her sister left the country, but the pastor was still trying to keep them apart. When he discovered they were seeing each other, he told Segen’s mother: She came to visit her from Asmara to see what was going on. “When she arrived, I helped her understand the truth,” Yafet said.

Segen’s mother asked Yafet if he wanted to live with Segen. “I said yes,” Yafet remembers. “She told us that we have to get married and leave [Sudan] as soon as possible.”

“They didn’t ask for anything,” Yafet said. “In our tradition when you get married you have to pay [money] to the woman’s family, but her mom told me that if you don’t have anything you can still have her because you love her.”

Yafet and Segen were married in a ceremony at a church in September 2010. There were about 30 people in attendance. “It was a small wedding just only to let people know we were getting married,” Yafet said.

“I was happy that day because I got my dream girl and it was my wedding day,” Yafet reflects. But, there was a bit of sadness as well.

“I was thinking about my family, my brothers and my sister,” he said. They didn’t get the chance to marry, to be happy, because they were in Eritrea.

That’s it for now. Oh, one last thing.

Cyril, the reader who researched the Italian lawyers, said something that was very powerful when he emailed us — about why he is helping out: “The overall refugee crisis has been bothering me for a while but I could think of nothing practical to do, something more than donating.”

We thought it was worth sharing, because it’s pretty much exactly why we’re doing this.

Onward.

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