Captain of wrecked ship held on murder suspicion for killing 800 Libyans

Catania, Italy: Italian police on Tuesday arrested the captain and first mate of a boat involved in the Mediterranean’s deadliest disaster in decades on suspicion of murder, causing a shipwreck and involvement in illegal immigration.

The two seamen, who have not been formally charged, were being held as part of a probe into a catastrophe that has evoked chilling comparisons with the slave trade and allegations of callous disregard on the part of European governments.

As the UN’s refugee body said at least 800 people died following capsizing of an impossibly overcrowded fishing boat off Libya, authorities in Sicily said they had detained the boat’s Tunisian skipper and his Syrian number two.

Hundreds of the victims, including an unknown number of children, will have died in horrific circumstances having been locked in the hold or the middle deck of the 20-metre boat which keeled over in pitch darkness as a Portuguese container ship arrived to answer its distress call. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi described the traffickers who packed their human cargo into the boat as akin to 18th-century slave traders.