In a photo on Twitter by the Spanish Coast Guard from Monday, the hidden three are shown curled up on the steering wheel, under the Alithini II’s hull, just above the waterline. The 183-meter-long ship, sailing under the flag of Malta, arrived in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, after leaving Lagos, Nigeria on November 17 and navigating up the west coast of Africa, according to maritime traffic data. The ship’s captain confirmed to the Red Cross that it had sailed from Nigeria 11 days earlier. The spokesman for the Canary Islands police said that the operator of the ship must take care of the fugitives, provide them with temporary accommodation and return them to their place of origin as soon as possible.
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“The authorities should have at least informed the migrants of their right to seek political asylum and should have been interrogated before returning them to the ship,” said Helena Melano, director of the immigration non-governmental organization Walking Borders. “The conditions of the journey are already an indication that something very serious may be behind it, because the photos are amazing. We have never seen such conditions, in which they arrived alive,” said Melano. She added: “These people should be in a state of shock. They need a few days to recover and from there they can explain what they ran away from, to make this decision.”