ON THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA (AP) — As usual, it started with a call on a satellite phone from Italian rescue officials in Rome. A fishing trawler-turned-exploration yacht-turned-rescue ship, the 30-year-old Golfo Azurro is now operated by Proactiva Open Arms, a Spanish nonprofit dedicated to rescuing migrants before they are consumed by the unforgiving Mediterranean Sea. According to UNHCR, an average of 14 people died in the Mediterranean every day in 2016, the highest number ever recorded. Canardo, the head of rescue operations on the Golfo Azurro, spoke that April day to Italy's Maritime Rescue Coordination Center, which passed along the troubled vessels' coordinates. In exchange, the EU agreed to speed up visas for Turkish citizens and donate 6 billion euros ($6.4 billion) to help support the hundreds of thousands of refugees living on Turkish soil. With the Greek smuggling route largely closed off, the path of least resistance has drifted to Libya — a sprawling, lawless country with a huge coast and competing rebel and government factions. On that April day, rescuers found two jam-packed boats with 152 people — 66 in a rubber boat, 86 in a wooden boat — 56 nautical miles (103 kilometers) from the Libyan coast. [...] the closest point is Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island 160 nautical miles away, a boat journey that takes more than 32 hours in calm waters. Mohammed Abdullah, a 32-year-old from Equatorial Guinea, explained how smugglers demand payment through some of the world's best-known money transfer companies, often via Gulf countries. If they are taken, kidnappers often hang their victims by their feet or fire off guns near their heads as their families are called on the phone, to terrify the families into paying ransoms.
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