Approaching the Italian coastguard vessel Fiorillo after four gruelling days at sea on 10 June 2008, a one-year-old girl is held high in the air in order to show the Coast Guard that the migrants are ready to be rescued, and that babies and women are on board.

Minutes later, many of them would be dead.

One of the survivors, Ernest Assumang Kumi, says in a sworn affidavit that 15 of the migrants were killed during the botched rescue, after a heavy iron collapsible ladder lowered by the Coast Guard hit and capsized the migrants’ boat. Many of passengers ended up either trapped under the capsized boat or sucked into the propellers of the Coast Guard’s ship.

The one-year-old’s parents, Cameroonian and Nigerian irregular migrants, were killed and all the information about the baby – her name, her first words, her birthday, her nationality – died with them. The survivors named the girl Blessing.

Blessing only lived thanks to the quick thinking of one of the other migrants. The migrant, named Lucky, reached into the water and grabbed Blessing by her hair, pulling her out of her mother’s arms as the two of them were submerged and drowning.

The Maltese adoptive parents of the girl, now six years old, are currently appealing to the Italian courts to reopen the case into the alleged wrongful death of the 15 irregular migrants who lost their lives that fateful day after a preliminary hearing in 2012 had ruled the case should not proceed to trial.

Represented by their Italian lawyer, Salvatore Di Dio, they argue that new testimony from one of the wreck’s survivors, who they managed to track down in Malta, contradicts sharply with testimony given by the ship’s captain.

At the time the ship’s captain had claimed that the migrants had rushed to one side of the boat in a scramble to board the Italian ship, but this is disputed by the survivor, who claims that it was, in fact, the iron ladder that was lowered in rough seas, with both vessels rocking wildly, that first struck and killed some of the migrants aboard and caused the boat to capsize.

While the couple and Dr Di Dio are still seeking other survivors, who have since dispersed across Europe, to give their own account of what took place aboard the migrant vessel that day, they believe this new testimony will be enough to bring the case to trial in Italy so that justice can be served for Blessing, who is now a Maltese citizen.

“When we got on the big boat we realised there were only 16 of us [onboard], so we asked the officials of the big boat where the remaining 15 persons were, and they lied to us and told us that they were being taken care of in the lower part of the boat. After pressing the officials for the truth, they finally told us that the other 15 had not survived,” Mr Assumang Kumi said in his affidavit. His fellow passengers were dead.

The official logbook of the Fiorillo makes no mention of the 15 who perished, and the captain, according to evidence presented in court, ordered his crew to delete all photographic evidence of the incident, evidence presented in court shows.

The story only came to light after the Italian investigative programme Le Iene received an anonymous letter from one of the crewmembers together with some photographs that remained, and which corroborated the survivors’ version of events.

Le Iene has since interviewed Blessing’s Maltese parents on two occasions in Malta, the last time as recently as last Monday, but for a reason that remains unexplained, the interviews have never been aired.

After her rescue, Blessing spent three months at Mater Dei Hospital following her ordeal in June 2008, before being released to the care of the Ursuline Sisters Crèche in Sliema.

Although doted upon and loved by the nuns, Blessing, now a Maltese citizen, faced an uncertain future and an unexplained past.

A week after the tragedy, some 1,000 kilometres away in Libya, Maltese-born Audrey Al Ghahes and her husband Saeid were trying to settle down to a new life after leaving Malta.

Their plans eventually fell through and they returned to Malta after three months. The couple were thinking of going to Ethiopia to adopt a child from there, but they immediately said yes when their social worker told them about Blessing.

“It was love at first sight when we met her,” Ms Al Ghahes says, with Blessing, who is now six years old, sitting quietly by her side.

“Although the tragedy at sea was well publicised at the time, my husband and I were so busy in our preparations leading up to our move to Libya that we were unaware of what had happened,” Ms Al Ghahes said.

It was only after the couple adopted Blessing in February 2010 that Ms Al Ghahes had what she describes as a “nagging feeling that something was not quite right”, suspecting that there was something more to the story on how Blessing lost her parents.

The social worker assigned to the Al Ghahes was not aware of the whole story, and she told the couple that when the migrants saw the Coast Guard’s boat they all panicked and the boat capsized, but further research into the case led the couple to understand how the Italian Coast Guard killed Blessing’s parents during the rescue.

“As soon as I found out what had happened, I phoned my husband and immediately I knew that I had to pursue this,” Ms Al Ghahes explains.

“Blessing has already started to ask questions about her past, and we have told her about it, but she is still too young to fully absorb it all. We have to give her the truth. Her parents left their home country in search of a better life. We want to honour their lives and their memory. We want those responsible for the tragedy to be brought to justice,” Ms Al Ghahes said.

“We don’t even know her real name. Although we have told her the story of what happened to her parents she still asks me questions, like what it was like when she was in my tummy or what she was like as a baby. We have to slowly build her up to understanding truth. She is a very intelligent girl. A lot of this information is available on the Internet. Just as I discovered it myself, Blessing will also be able to. We don’t want her to think that we have hidden anything from her,” Ms Al Ghahes explains.

One of her adoptive parents’ biggest fears is that Blessing will grow up and question why they did not fight for the truth to emerge. They are determined to give Blessing a bright future as well as help her understand her past and why her parents are no longer alive.

“They left their home country, they risked their lives. They knew that there was a good chance that they would not make it, but luckily enough they encountered the Italian Coast Guard. They should have been saved, but because of an error from the Italian Coast Guard’s side, they were killed,” Ms Al Ghahes said.

“Maybe she does not want to show us that she understands. Subconsciously she knows everything. I’m sure she understood what we told her, but maybe she doesn’t want to show any emotions yet. She lost her identity, she will never have her Nigerian identity and we cannot give her parents back. She’s lucky that she was saved, but on the other hand she’s unfortunate because she will not grow up with her natural parents, even though to her we are her biological parents.”

Ms Al Ghahes admits that not being able to answer some of Blessing’s questions does hurt and make her feel uncomfortable, but it also motivates her to seek the whole truth.