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Published on
19.03.2019 at 07:54
by
AFP
Gambians Cherno Jallow, Senegalese Cheikhaya Dieng and Ivorians Fofana Lamine are currently serving a 44-month prison sentence in Italy after smugglers forced them to sail in the Mediterranean.
Shortly before their release, the three men told AFP their trials from their prison in Trapani, Sicily.
All three left their respective countries in 2015 in search of work and all hoped to find him in Libya.
But once there, Jallow, 22, was kidnapped and his family was forced to pay a ransom.
Chaos and threats to their security prompted Dieng, 22, and Lamine, 25, to contact smugglers to try to reach Italy.
"The day I left, they even handed me a compbad and said," Someone will run the boat and you'll hold the compbad, "Lamine said.
"I said that I have no experience. But they have weapons! I did not use the compbad. I am Ivorian, the other was Gambian, we did not speak the same language! "
Dieng was on another boat.
"When he discovered that I was a fisherman for years, the intermediary even gave me back my money and got me rudder," he said.
"I did it to save my life, because if I refused, they could kill me, for nothing".
The unfinished training of Jallow's teachers caught the attention of smugglers.
"The same day we were going to Italy, a man said to me: it is you who will hold the compbad," he said during an interview in the prison theater.
"You studied, you know how to use a compbad." He added: "If you do not use this compbad, we will kill you because you will have destroyed our business."
"They literally put the rifle on my head … and then the Arab took the boat up to the middle of the sea and threw me the compbad. I did not have any other choice, "he said.
The three men and their boats were rescued off Libya by a Norwegian ship before being transferred to the Italian coastguard and landed at Trapani in January 2016.
There, the police asked the migrants who had flown and sailed the ships, and they identified the three men currently in prison.
They were sentenced to three years and eight months in prison and, with some time for good behavior, they will soon be released.
But they also come to learn that Italy has rejected their claims for asylum.
"The real leaders, they are still there," Dieng said.
"There are Africans like me who work with Libyans, they are traffickers. They stay in Libya because they earn a lot of money, "he lamented.
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