Tunisian justice has dismissed the case for the seven members of the crew of an oil tanker which ran aground on April 16 off the coast of Tunisia, the spokesman for the court told AFP on Thursday August 11. of Gabès, Mohamed Karray.
After the sinking of this boat, the public prosecutor's office in Gabes opened an investigation to determine the causes of the accident, the nature of the tanker's activity and its route in the weeks preceding its sinking.
Her crew - four Turks, a Georgian captain and two Azerbaijanis - had been under arrest since April 22.
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The court of first instance of Gabes (south) on Wednesday dismissed the case and decided to release the entire crew, said Mohamed Karray.
However, according to the same source, the Gabes prosecutor appealed.
The Xelo, beating "
illegally
The flag of Equatorial Guinea, officially leaving the port of Damietta in Egypt bound for Malta, had sunk in Tunisian waters where it had taken refuge due to bad weather conditions.
For some unknown reason, this tanker, 58 meters long and 9 wide, had started to take on water.
Tunisian navy forces had evacuated the crew just before the ship sank.
Tunis then announced that the ship was empty, ruling out any risk of pollution, after having initially assured that it was carrying 750 tonnes of diesel on the basis of on-board documents.
Images transmitted by the Tunisian navy showed the on-board instruments and in particular the GPS destroyed with hammer blows.
After the sinking, Equatorial Guinea announced the suspension of nearly 400 ships flying
the country's flag "
illegally ".
Tunisian media and experts had recalled the proximity of the Gulf of Gabes to northwestern Libya, a major oil exporter, whose coasts have been the scene of hydrocarbon trafficking in recent years.
Contacted by AFP, Rafaa Tabib, Tunisian geopolitical scientist, specialist in traffic in Libya, had estimated that the Xelo was "
a floating service station selling (illegally, editor's note) hydrocarbons to the many ships passing through the Channel of Sicily
".
According to Rafaa Tabib, this trafficking has "
three main actors: the Italian mafia, companies with unclear legal status in Malta and Libyan militias operating in the Zawiya sector, where the largest refinery
” in Libya is located.