What the Media Refuses to Publicize: 26 Nigerian Girls Found Dead in the Mediterrean
By: MICHELLE FLYNN
On November 6th 2017, the bodies of 26 Nigerian teenage girls were found by an anti-trafficking rescue boat called the Cantabria at the site of two shipwrecks alarmingly close to the Italian coast.
The shocking discovery has Italy and its prosecutors wondering whether these deaths have any correlation with human sex trafficking. According to Gaia Pianigiani and Christine Hauser of the New York Times, the girls are said to have been between ages as young as 14-18 with the bodies of survivors “floating lifelessly beside a nearly submerged rubber dingy that [they] tried to cling to.”
Some speculate the women were migrants from Niger and Nigeria who had embarked on a hazardous journey from Libya to Europe. Unfortunately, deaths are common in this area; however, what makes this a paramount and unusual case is that all the victims of this crossing are women.
Angela Giuffrida reports, “Two suspected smugglers from Libya and Egypt identified as, Al Mabrouc Wisam Harar and Mohamed Ali Bouzid have been accused of the trafficking of at least 150 people, but prosecutors are still working on connecting their motives to the case.”
According to the International Organization for Migration, over 150,000 immigrants and refugees have survived the journey over the Mediterranean and entered Europe as of November 1st.
“The bodies of these girls were scheduled to be autopsied November 14th,” Kate Seamons of Fox news states.
Investigators are hoping to determine an official cause of death as well as whether the girls had been sexually abused. An exact cause of death has not yet been reported.
Works Cited
Giuffrida, Angela. “Arrests in Italy as 26 Nigerian women and girls found dead.” The Guardian, 7 Nov. 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/07/italy-investigating-deaths-of-nigerian-women-thought-to-have-been-murdered
“Migrant Boat Arrivals in Europe Top 150,000 in 2015.” The International Organization for Migration. The UN Migration Agency, 10 July 2015.
https://www.iom.int/news/migrant-boat-arrivals-europe-top-150000-2015
Pianigiani, Gaia & Christine Hauser. “26 Young Women From Nigeria Found Dead in The Mediterranean Sea.” New York Times, 7 Nov. 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/europe/italy-migrants-teenagers-dead.html
Seamons, Kate. “Italy to autopsy bodies of 26 girls found in Mediterranean,” Fox News Network, LLC. 7 Nov. 2017. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/11/07/italy-to-autopsy-bodies-26-girls-found-in-mediterranean.html