All possible witnesses in El Hiblu 1 case have testified, court told

The group of asylum seekers who were rescued by the tanker El Hiblu 1 in 2019 when the dinghy they were using to travel from Libya to Europe started to take on water, had been asleep when the AFM boarded the vessel which had claimed to have been hijacked, a witness told the court on Tuesday afternoon. 

The vessel rescued 108 people in March 2019, after being alerted by an aircraft from EUNAVFOR MED. The ship’s crew had initially intended to return the people it had rescued to Libya, but after they protested against their return, the ship eventually steered north to Malta.

Three teenagers were arrested upon arrival in Malta and spent seven months under arrest. They are charged with terrorism-related offences and face imprisonment for anything between seven and 30 years if found guilty.

When the compilation of evidence continued before Magistrate Nadine Lia on Tuesday afternoon, one of the rescued migrants took the witness stand against the three accused. 

He told the court that he did not recognise one of the defendants, adding “but what I have seen, I will say.”

The witness told the court that he wanted to thank the three accused: “People wanted to jump into the water but they calmed them down. They told them that everything would be OK.”

He told the court about his voyage to Malta, and how he together with a group of about 100 others had set sail on an inflatable boat in the hope of reaching Europe, going on to explain how they eventually needed to be rescued.

Cross-examined by defence lawyer Cedric Mifsud, it emerged that the man had not been aware that the captain had turned the boat around. He explained that the captain had spoken to the three accused men because they spoke English. 

On the morning after they were rescued, some of the rescued migrants had recognised the Libyan coast in the distance, he said. The migrants had panicked and some people were shouting and crying, with others threatening to jump overboard. 

The captain had emerged from the cabin and asked what was going on, with the witness highlighting that the captain specifically addressed the three English speaking men. He explained that the three men followed the captain into the cabin and came out some time later. 

“Am I correct to say that the captain invited them into the cabin?,” Mifsud asked the witness. “Yes,” he replied. “Am I correct to say that they didn’t, in any way, force their way in?” 

“They did not go into the cabin forcefully, but calmly,” replied the witness. Neither had he seen any weapons, nor heard any threats being uttered by the accused, he told the court.

The witness confirmed that he had been afraid of being imprisoned in Libya.

The second time they went back to the cabin, they were invited in by the captain himself, he said.

Asked about when the vessel was boarded by the authorities, the witness said that everyone was asleep, and highlighted that there was no violence on board. 

He told the court that some of the passengers on the dinghy had decided not to board the ship and had stayed behind, fearing that the merchant vessel would return them to Libya. 

“Since the ship was not a rescue ship, there was some suspicion that we would not be taken on board to be saved, because this was a working ship,” the man testified. Asked whether at some point he had feared the vessel would return him to Libya, he replied in the affirmative. “Yes. For a moment I was afraid that the captain would return us to Libya, but the captain reassured us that he would not do it.”

No footage recorded by El Hiblu 1’s CCTV - Court expert.

During Tuesday’s sitting, a court-appointed expert who had been appointed by the inquiring magistrate in 2019 also took the witness stand to exhibit his report. 

The expert said he had examined a digital video recorder and two nautical charts seized from the ship. He had also subsequently obtained recordings and tracking data from the AFM.

“The vessel was equipped with not less than six cameras, but the digital video recorder was not recording, they were on “view” only,” the expert explained. Asked to explain further, he said “you can only see what is being captured at that point in time. They [the cameras] were never activated to record.”

The nautical charts would later feature during the captain’s interrogation, during which he explained what the plotting points indicated on the maps represented.

Inspector Omar Zammit asked whether he knew when the recording had been stopped. “The system was interrogated and no video was recorded on the hard drive. It was equipped to store up to one month of video,” replied the expert. 

At the end of the sitting, inspector Omar Zammit told the court that the prosecution had been unable to trace nine other individuals who were rescued with the accused in 2019. 

Defence lawyer Neil Falzon asked the inspector to explain why this was so, observing that the prosecution has had problems locating witnesses for several months now.

Inspector Zammit told the court that the prosecution had subpoenaed several government departments and requested the asylum seekers' addresses, but police had not found them when they went to serve the summons.

The prosecution informed the court that all witnesses who were present on the El Hiblu 1 and who could be traced had now testified.

The magistrate sent the acts of the case to the Attorney General, adjourning the case for May 23.

Inspector Omar Zammit is prosecuting. Lawyers Neil Falzon, Cedric Mifsud and Gianluca Cappitta assisted the accused.

READ ALSO: Abdalla, Amara and Kader: how three teenagers were accused of terrorism