Using language reminiscent of a travel agency advertising campaign, a Libyan migrant smuggler and some of his satisfied customers shot a promotional video aboard a migrant rescue ship belonging to a German NGO in the Mediterranean. The Italian authorities are now investigating what they call “promo videos” intended to publicize human trafficking services.
The videos were first spotted and republished by Migrant Rescue Watch on X on Monday, February 5th. According to the watchdog, the videos and pictures show how the migrants, just minutes after being “rescued”—i.e. handed over to the NGO by the smugglers close to the Libyan coast—began filming themselves to thank their trafficker, Naseem Areebi, who goes by the moniker Mazen Al-Zuwari.
Based on his accent, the Italian daily Il Giornale believes that at least some of the footage was shot by Al-Zuwari himself from his boat’s driver’s seat as he smugly watched his cargo being taken over by the German NGO. “Al-Zuwari number one” is being repeated by happy migrants, and then a custom song is added to the video that praises the smuggler further.
The “rescue” took place on January 31st by Humanity 1, the rescue vessel of the German charity SOS Humanity, which has been frequently criticized for acting as a migrant taxi on the Mediterranean by picking up migrants just outside African territorial waters and shipping them straight to Italy.
The videos of celebration continue once all the migrants are aboard the vessel, showing how a handful of them began to dance, inviting crew members to participate—which they do with pleasure. In the end, the videos point to a website called “Arab Wind” where one can contact the smugglers and arrange the journey. Crossing the Mediterranean illegally can cost up to $5-6,000, regardless of the obvious risk to human life.
Four days later, Humanity 1 offloaded all 64 migrants in Massa Carrara, Italy, shortly before the pictures and videos were uploaded on the internet. Il Giornale suspects that the boat’s helmsman—Al-Zuwari or an employee of his—might have also taken the journey to Italy while pretending to be a refugee.
According to the Migrant Rescue Watch, the footage not only captures the complete absence of any type of “distress at sea,” but also shows that SOS Humanity was “willfully complicit” in the creation of the videos that are clearly meant for use as promotional content.
“Simply another successful (on-call) delivery and pick-up of human cargo executed with criminal collusion of the NGO,” the watchdog observed.
The NGO—SOS Humanity—is one of the two German charities that Berlin awarded with €790,000 to continue and expand its work on the Mediterranean. The funding caused a diplomatic incident between Berlin and Rome, with PM Giorgia Meloni sending an angry letter to Chancellor Scholz in which she said she was “astonished” by the decision.
As Meloni had to explain to Scholz, the presence of rescue NGOs that usually pick up migrants —who are not in distress and close to the African coasts—constitutes a major pull factor in illegal migration to Europe. “It’s widely known,” Meloni wrote, that these NGOs are “multiplying the departures of precarious boats that result not only in additional burden on Italy but at the same time increases the risk of new tragedies at sea.”
Last year, Italy registered over 155,000 illegal migrants who arrived through the Mediterranean, many of whom were dropped off by one of the dozens of rescue NGO ships operating in the area. After the country’s reception centers were overrun last September, Meloni began to build up a partnership with Albania that could take some of the weight off Italy.
While these NGOS consistently deny that their operations would encourage illegal migration, the evidence says otherwise. Back in 2018, the German Gefira Foundation observed that at least nine of these NGOs frequently picked up migrants right at the Libyan coasts and then ferried them straight to Europe—39,000 of them in just two months.