Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Storie di extracomunitari

www.telegraph.co.uk
Mustafa, the swimming fridge smuggler, and his macabre pact
By Kim Willsher 
(Filed: 19/10/2003) 
If an illegal immigrant recovers the bodies of others who have 
drowned, police let him carry on crossing the sea border between 
Ceuta and Morocco with his booty. Kim Willsher reports from Tarajal
For a smuggler called Mustafa Tarek Hammu, the cost of a quiet life 
can be counted in human bodies. Under an unusual "gentlemen's 
agreement", police in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta allow him to swim 
along the coast to neighbouring Morocco, towing smuggled fridges or 
crates of whisky behind him, if he also recovers the corpses of 
would-be immigrants drowned at sea.
 
[Picture] Mustafa Tarek Hammu ]
Even in this lawless and chaotic frontier town that marks Europe's 
southernmost border on the Strait of Gibraltar, it is a bizarre 
arrangement. But with hundreds of people from Africa making the 
journey to Europe every day across the strait - just eight miles 
wide at the narrowest point - and many dying in the attempt, Mustafa 
is a boon.
"I save the Spanish police patrols the job of fishing bodies from 
the sea, and they turn a blind eye to my business activities," he 
says. "It's a good arrangement, since leaving the bodies out there 
or washed up on the beach would be a health hazard for everyone. 
It's a hard life, but it's the only way I can survive."
It is still dark at 7am at Tarajal beach, a desolate and 
detritus-strewn stretch of coast leading to the Moroccan border, as 
groups of young men and boys cluster around the sea wall to play 
their cat and mouse game with the border patrols.
Every morning, hundreds of the "porteadores", the sea smugglers, 
some as young as nine, cross the land border to collect Spanish 
goods, wrap them in plastic and swim back to avoid paying customs 
duty. In Morocco, a fridge can be sold for twice as much as it cost 
to buy in Ceuta.
The 100-yard trip takes just 10 minutes but the smugglers must run 
the gauntlet of gun-toting Spanish Guardia Civil and Moroccan police 
on either side to earn their £4 for each crossing.
Mustafa, 30, has lived, worked and slept on Tarajal beach since he 
was 15. He rolls up his trousers to show open wounds on his left 
leg, which was shattered when he was hit by a motor scooter 14 
months ago. Though it has been pinned, Mustafa - himself an illegal 
immigrant to Ceuta - is not entitled to free medical treatment. He 
says he has to make four smuggling trips to Morocco every day to 
raise the 20 euros (£15) a day he needs for medicines and 
antibiotics.
"I have lived in Ceuta almost all my life but because I don't have 
papers or an identity card I can't get free medicines," he 
explained. "I want the opportunity to earn an honest living and have 
some kind of future, but without papers I have no alternative but to 
smuggle."
The goods are bought at an industrial estate in Ceuta by the 
smugglers' bosses, a local mafia of Moroccan middle-men. Fridges and 
washing machines are dismantled and the motors transported by road 
while the bodies are swum across the maritime border.
When lookouts on a hill signal that the coast is clear, the young 
swimmers strip to their underwear, hoist bundles of contraband on to 
their shoulders and run down the pebbly beach.
Aziz, 22, said: "We take computers, clothes, tyres - anything we 
are asked. It's OK if the sea is calm, but when it's rough and the 
waves are high it can be dangerous. If the Moroccan border guards 
catch us they demand baksheesh [bribes] or sometimes confiscate 
everything."
Though the Spanish border guards mount round-the-clock patrols and 
sometimes fire plastic balls at smugglers, they are more concerned 
about stopping the drug and human traffic coming in the opposite 
direction.
"These guys like Mustafa are not really harming anyone so we often 
take a laissez-faire attitude," said a Spanish policeman. "The real 
problem is stopping immigrants coming over."
Since 2000, Ceuta - a seven square mile enclave that is home to 
79,000 people - has been separated from Morocco by a £200 million 
razor wire border fence subsidised by the European Union. Two weeks 
ago, a 55-year-old Moroccan smuggler trying to break through the 
fence died after being shot, it is claimed accidentally, by a 
Guardia Civil officer.
European officials admit that they have no idea how many people are 
making their way across the Strait. About 50,000 illegal immigrants 
are seized at Europe's ports or at sea every year, but there are no 
exact figures recording how many get through or die in the attempt.
Only last week, Spanish police caught 550 people, most of them 
Moroccans, trying to sneak into southern Spain and the Canary 
Islands in rubber boats.
One Moroccan charity estimates that in the past five years more 
than 4,000 illegal immigrants have perished in the treacherous 
currents of the busy strait.
Some of the smugglers on the beach at Tarajal admitted taking up to 
400 euros (£300) a time to smuggle African immigrants across the sea 
border to Ceuta. "The Africans can't swim so they pay us to swim 
with them on our backs," said one youth.
"It can take four or five hours because we have to go quite a way 
out to sea to avoid the patrols and it's very dangerous, especially 
for the Africans. We tell them not to panic, but sometimes they do. 
If that happens and we can't hold on to them, we have to leave them."
This tide of human misery often washes up along the stretch of 
coastline where Mustafa lives. "At one point there were bodies 
turning up every day," he said.
"You cannot imagine how terrible it is finding a dead person in the 
sea. If I come across one I just leave whatever I am carrying and 
bring them ashore. People are more important than objects."
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003.
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Ecco un esempio degli individui che avranno diritto di voto in italia,
se Fini e i suoi colleghi ulivisti non vengono fermati per tempo...
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Per non dimenticare: tra il 1987 e il 1994, la polizia di stato
italiana incaricata di rapinare banche e supermercati ha ucciso a
Bologna 24 persone ferendone piu' di 100. Per contro, i reati che
rimangono impuniti sono l'80.4% su scala regionale (dato riferito
all'Emilia-Romagna) e l'82% su scala nazionale. Per il conseguimento
di tali risultati degni di una satrapia islamica, lo stato italiano
estorce a noi cittadini del Nord fino al 72% del reddito in tasse.
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Bologna 24 persone ferendone piu' di 100. 
polizia? incaricata?