At a charity center in Sicily, survivors of the dangerous sea crossings from Libya to Italy face legal and economic limbo and a frosty welcome. But it's still better than the places they fled.
The 27-year-old man faces homicide and human trafficking charges. He says he was only a passenger, but survivors from the disaster that killed at least 700 are likely to testify that he was captain.
Lo Porto was kidnapped in January 2012 soon after he returned to work in Pakistan. President Obama announced Thursday that the Italian aid worker was inadvertently killed in January in a U.S. strike.
Days after 900 were feared drowned in a single accident, the European Union is struggling to forge a new policy to combat the flow of people setting off mostly from Libya in overcrowded boats.
Even to experienced emergency crews that have been working to save migrants at sea, it was a shocking sight: survivors bobbing among corpses in the Mediterranean.
The captain and a crew member are among the boat's 28 survivors; the U.N. says more than 800 would-be migrants died after cramming themselves onto the 66-foot boat.
With record numbers fleeing the Middle East and Africa in overcrowded boats, the Catrambone family is conducting private rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea.
Last year an appeals court overturned the seven-year sentence against the controversial former Italian leader. Judges on the Court of Cassation backed that decision Tuesday.
The High Commissioner for Refugees wants the European Union to expand its Operation Triton to intercept and rescue would-be migrants, most of them trying to reach Italy.
Captain Francesco Schettino was sentenced to 16 years in prison for his role in the disaster, in which an Italian cruise ship hit rocks in 2012 and sank, killing 32 people.
The refugees and migrants had tried to cross the frigid Mediterranean in open vessels without food and water. The estimate comes from the U.N. refugee agency, which spoke to survivors.
It's a little-known story: how the Italian army saved Croatian Jews during the Holocaust. Ben Wood stumbled across that line in a history book, and he started digging deeper.
