The Palermo court of appeals on
Friday upheld a 30-year prison sentence against a Somali
national who skippered a migrant vessel that sank off Lampedusa
Island on October 3, 2013, killing at least 366 people.
Mouhamud Elmi Muhdin was rescued from survivors who tried
to lynch him at a migrant reception center on the Sicilian
island in 2013, and who identified him as one of their
traffickers.
He was found guilty last year of human trafficking,
criminal racketeering with intent to abet illegal immigration,
and rape.
"The fact that the verdict was upheld brings justice at
least insofar as Muhdin's cruelty towards the young Eritreans he
abducted in the desert - his torture of the men and his rapes of
the women," said Lampedusa Mayor Giusy Nicolini.
The 155 survivors of the trek from the Horn of Africa
through the Sahara and across the Mediterranean from Libya told
police at the time that all the female asylum seekers from
Eritrea, Somalia and Syria were raped by the traffickers during
the voyage.
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