Malta Ship Photos & Action Photos

DRUG BUST - 10 tons of Cannabis - June 2018. Italy’s Guardia di Finanza (GDF) finance police boarded and searched a Dutch Flag fishing vessel  QUEST  around 130 nautical miles southeast of Sicily after tracking the vessel from the air for two days,  seizing over 10 tonnes of cannabis resin worth up to 20 million euros in a dramatic high-seas operation, arresting all nine crew members and confiscating the vessel on Thursday 7th June. The GDF said that the drugs recovered from the boat were of a sufficiently high quality that it had a market value of between 15-20 million euros ($17.7 million-$23.6 million). Italian Newspaper La Repubblica said that the ringleader was a Maltese man, who it named as David Bonello. The Italian news outlet had initially said three of the nine arrested were Maltese, only to revise that as more information surfaced.   Italian media said the boat had set sail from Malta and had picked up the drugs after a rendezvous with...

SHIP ARREST -  Rescue Vessel OPEN ARMS at Pozzallo, Sicily - 19.03.2018. Prosecutors in Catania have seized the rescue vessel OPEN ARMS operated by the Spanish NGO ProActiva Open Arms engaged in migrant search and rescue operations in the central Mediterranean. The vessel is currently berthed at Pozzallo after she disembarked 218 migrants on Saturday 17th March, having refused to hand them over to the Libyan authorities following two days of diplomatic negotiations. Three people have been placed under investigation, the captain, the aboard coordinator and the Spanish head of the NGO, for alleged criminal activities for illegal immigration purposes, human trafficking and association with human traffickers criminal rings. . The probe centres on the events leading up to the ship's arrival in Pozzallo on Saturday. ProActiva Open Arms claims its actions were dictated exclusively by need as part of an operation to save lives at sea. However, prosecutors say there was a specific...