The Ragusa prosecutor has requested indictments against 10 Maltese residents in connection with the tragic landings on the coast of Sicily four years ago after concluding its inquiry on the case, The Malta Independent on Sunday has learnt.

They stand to be indicted with multiple homicide and conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants from Malta to Ragusa, sources close to the investigations told this paper.

The requests were filed on Wednesday by prosecutor Lelia Di Domenico at the Ragusa courts, where a judge will hear the case in the coming days and decide whether to uphold the requests or not.

One of them, a man, died. The other nine are Joseph Mamo, 50, John Xuereb, 61, Ivan Xuereb, 59, Guellouma Ferhat, 54 (of Algeria), Doreen Carabott, 33, Carlo Stivala, 25, Doris Mamo, 33, Rosaria Nazim, 53, and Hassan Zaltoum, 46 (of Egypt).

Ferhat is currently serving a three-year jail sentence in Malta after being convicted on 10 November 2004 of aiding and abetting illegal immigrants on and before 13 October 2002.

Another three men wanted in connection with this case have already been caught, but none of them have been extradited from Malta.

Egyptian Abdou Kafas Salah El Din, 39, was stopped at Fiumicino Airport in Rome on 25 January 2003.

Carmelo “Charles” Butler, 45, of St Paul’s Bay, was caught on 5 May last year when he arrived at Heathrow Airport on an Air Malta flight.

More than three months later, on 25 August, a 25-year-old Tunisian man resident in Malta, Mohammed Anis Bel Hadj, was caught at Santa Croce Camerina in Sicily after leaving Malta a year earlier and entering Sicily illegally.

Butler is currently on trial in Ragusa facing murder charges after a 48-year-old Tunisian man, Habib Tabbakh, was found dead on the shore of Caucana (in the Ragusa area) the day after a landing on 4 July 2001.

In a second landing on the shore of Randello (also in the Ragusa area), on 10 July 2001, four Iraqis were found dead on the same beach.

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