MAZARA DEL VALLO, Italy—When Domenico Asaro heard that some Sicilian fishermen had been kidnapped off the Libyan coast at the beginning of September, he wasn’t surprised. As a fisherman himself from Mazara del Vallo, a seaside town on the southwestern coast of Sicily, home to Italy’s largest fishing fleet, Asaro is aware of the dangers of the job. “In the 40 years I’ve worked as a fisherman, I’ve heard of over 100 attacks by Libyan authorities against my colleagues,” Asaro said as he walked through Mazara’s port beside dozens of docked fishing vessels. “We all feel that both Italy and the EU have failed to protect us.”
In the latest incident, Libyan militias stopped and seized two Italian fishing vessels operating 35 miles off the coast of Benghazi, a port city in eastern Libya that is currently controlled by General Khalifa Haftar. Since then, the 18 crew members, who were accused of invading Libya’s waters, have been held inside detention facilities in Benghazi, while Italy and Libya continue to negotiate their release.
