Somewhere among the heaps of papers is Commissario Carlo Parini, head of an illegal-immigration taskforce. Parini is pensive. From until earlier this month, the year-old Parini โ who at 6ft 5in towers over most people โ headed the Interforce Group on Illegal Immigration in Sicily Gicic. In that time nearly , people arrived in the island. Their stories are all catalogued in the dusty folders that cover his office. Over the past few days they have been transferred to cardboard boxes, their final destination the basement.
We had almost arrived at the heart of the criminal organisation. Looking around the office in search of something he fears has been lost, he suddenly exclaims. He remembers it as if it were yesterday. Thirty-five shivering Sri Lankans arrived in Italy from Egypt aboard a wooden boat one winter evening in , when Parini was still a junior anti-Mafia police officer. As he waited for their arrival at the port of Riposto, just along the coast from Syracuse, he had no idea that the moment would change his life and set the course for the next 20 years of his career.
No one โ not the police, and certainly not the press โ could have predicted then what would happen over the coming years, when Europe would be forced to come to grips with the most intense migrant and refugee crisis since the second world war. That arrival in the port of Riposto was a mere hint of what was to come. In , 2, migrants crossed the Mediterranean to reach Sicily; 18, came in In it was 57, Between and last November, Parini handled 1, arrivals, investigated the deaths of more than 2, migrants, and arrested 1, people accused of human trafficking.
This last total earned him the attention of the international press, who lionised him. One of my colleagues had a heart attack. He had had no sleep for three consecutive days. And then that cursed day came in October that changed the migrant crisis for ever. That day that changed us all. The mass drowning off Lampedusa on 3 October marked a turning point.
That night people perished in the sea in an attempt to reach Sicily. Until then European governments had largely watched from their capitals. Now they agreed that it was time to act. On 18 October, Italy launched the Mare Nostrum operation, a military intervention for humanitarian ends intended to prevent such tragedies.
