Police in southern Italy believe they have caught the Mediterranean's most infamous migrant trafficker - the fugitive skipper wanted in connection with the Christmas day drowning of several hundred would-be illegal immigrants between Sicily and Malta. A man claiming to be an Iraqi, Mr Hassan Abdullah, was last night being held in solitary confinement at a jail in the town of Catanzaro, near the "toe" of Italy. Reports said his fingerprints matched those of Mr Youssef al-Halal, formerly captain of the migrant-running freighter, the Yioham.
According to survivors, the Yioham was involved in a collision last December 25th with a smaller vessel to which Mr al-Halal and his crew had transferred almost 300 migrants at gunpoint.
The smaller vessel, which was to have taken them into the shallow waters fringing the coast of Sicily, sank with most of the migrants locked inside its holds, they claimed. No bodies or wreckage have been recovered.
On January 8th, a Greek prosecutor charged Mr al-Halal and his crew with the illegal movement of immigrants. International warrants were later issued for their arrest.
The man identified as Mr al-Halal was among more than 400 illegal immigrants who disembarked from a vessel which beached on the coast near Catanzaro last month.
He had been in command of the ship as it approached the shore, but had tried to pass himself off as one of the immigrants after the operation was discovered.