Would-be migrants from North Lebanon approach the container ship that came to their rescue, August 6, 2022. (Photo credit: Michel Hallak)
BEIRUT — Intelligence services arrested four Lebanese in Batroun Saturday afternoon, accused of arranging to smuggle more than 75 Lebanese aboard a rickety boat that went down off the coast of Turkey Saturday morning.
Here’s what we know:
• L’Orient Today’s correspondent reported that the passengers, who had left Lebanon about five days earlier, were rescued by a European container ship Lebanese Saturday morning. The would-be migrants, said to be from Tripoli and the north of the country, and are now en route to Spain.
• Such emigration attempts — mainly from the north, sometimes foiled by security services — have become commonplace in crisis-swamped Lebanon. On July 18, a Palestinian woman suspected of organizing illegal crossings to Italy and Greece was arrested by State Security in Bir Hassan, a southern suburb of Beirut.
• These attempts to flee the country sometimes have sometimes ended in tragedy. Last April, dozens of people who left North Lebanon in a makeshift boat were shipwrecked, after which dozens remain missing, angering their relatives. — Reporting by Michel Hallak