Escaped Syrian Slave Rescued In A Dinghy Heading Towards Malta
A Syrian refugee was saved after a rescue boat spotted him floating towards Malta in a tiny rubber dinghy.
Sami, a 30-year old Syrian, had set off alone from a port in Libya about 20 hours before being rescued, where he was attempting to escape the slave-like conditions he was being kept in.
After being rescued, he reported that he had been living like a slave for the last three years in a hospital, where he was forced to work.
As a Proactiva Open Arms rescue ship was doing its final check before heading back to Malta, a team member using binoculars saw a silhouette on the horizon about 3km away from the rescue boat.
As they moved closer to the silhouette they saw it was a solitary man in a 3-metre rubber dinghy, the kind “you use at the beach, with a motor, dates for food, and spare batteries,” said Riccardo Gatti, one of the rescuers on board.
When they approached the dinghy, Sami, the Syrian refugee, began to shout “I’m Syrian, I’m Syrian!” before passing out due to exhaustion.
His rescue attempt is the latest in a long series of migrants attempted to reach Europe from Libyan ports.
After they had brought him on board and checked his medical condition, they “gave him something to eat and let him shower, and let him sleep,” Gatti said.
When Sami had recovered, he told his rescuers that he had worked as a nurse in three different hospitals in Libya where he had ended up after fleeing the war in Syria. He hopes to make it to Sweden where his Palestinian girlfriend lives.
A bombed hospital in Libya
Compared to the many other refugees and asylum-seekers who head to Libya to find freedom only to find harsh conditions and possible enslavement, Sami stayed in relative comfort in a hospital.
However, he was rarely allowed to leave the hospital, where he said there was a “hunt on for Syrians, since they are believed to have more money (than other migrants) or do better paid work,” Gatti said.
He also spoke of the horrors of living under Islamist militias, where asking for simple necessities like a glass of water could get you killed in the streets. His fear and desperation led him to “try something crazy” like setting out alone in the tiny boat.
Sami also told rescuers that “he knew he would have died if no one found him,” Gatti said. With regular reports of migrant ships sinking in their attempt to reach Europe, he would not have been wrong.
Heading out from Libya into the Mediterranean all alone in such a flimsy boat as winter approaches still needs to be planned accordingly, and Sami explained how he had spent a week scouting a hidden stretch of beach not controlled by Islamist militias, bought a dingy from a youth, obtained a few supplied and took off on his perilous journey.
Despite his ordeals, he is in a good medical condition and is now being processed in a migrant centre in Lampedusa.
Would you have taken the risk Sami did to escape slavery?
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