The human traffickers are Meloni's Libyan friends: here is the evidence.

Illegal pushbacks

Abdul Salam Al-Zoubi is one of the main "horses" that Italy has bet on to replace the now compromised Almasri. Is everything okay in Tripoli and Rome?

In the days following the rescue on August 21st and the disembarkation of the survivors in Trapani on August 23rd, 2025, based on photographic material and information gathered on board from the crew, we conducted research to better understand what had happened and identify the militants who threw the ten shipwrecked people into the sea in front of our ship . Increasingly, in at least three cases last August, unscrupulous traffickers have resorted to the so-called "jettison" technique, which involves approaching an area where naval rescue vessels are operating and abandoning people in the water to their fate. This is clearly an extremely dangerous practice that increases the risk of death at sea and must be absolutely discouraged.

However, in the case of the night between August 20th and 21st, the dynamics, while apparently similar, were characterized by certain peculiarities that made the incident even more worrying. First, we discovered that the military vessel that violently threw the survivors into the sea a short distance from our ship, approximately 30 nautical miles off the coast of Tripoli between 2:20 and 3:20 a.m. on August 21st, 2025, was precisely one of those from the small fleet that surrounded us, threatened us, and attempted to intimidate us into moving away from the international waters where we were conducting monitoring, search, and rescue operations on the morning of the previous Monday, August 18th.

( Photograph No. 1, taken from aboard the Mediterranea ship on 08.18.2025) ( Photograph no. 2, taken from aboard the Mediterranea ship 08.21.2025) The enlargement of the daytime images also allows us to identify some of the soldiers on board, only one of whom, armed with a rifle, appears to be disguised with a balaclava.

( Photograph no. 3 taken from aboard the Mediterranea ship 18.08.2025)

On board a dinghy not far from the black boat you can see a soldier in camouflage overalls, disguised by a balaclava, on whose jacket, at the height of the left shoulder, there is a patch, that is, a symbol identifying belonging to a specific armed formation.

( Photograph no. 4 taken from aboard the Mediterranea ship 08.18.2025)

We compared the images with some videos found on open sources on Facebook and TikTok: we can see that the symbol depicted on the patch is attributable to soldiers of the 80th Special Operations Battalion of the 111th Brigade, which is led by Abdul Salam Al-Zoubi, current Undersecretary/Deputy Minister of Defense in the Government of National Accord (GNU) in Tripoli, appointed to this position in July 2024 by Prime Minister Dbeibah. From a video published on what appears to be the brigade's official page, the same logo can clearly be seen on the jacket of the soldier aboard one of the vehicles that attempted to intimidate and remove us on August 18, and which was accompanied by the other speedboat from which the migrants were later thrown into the sea.

The video is accompanied by the following caption: " The Libyan Army – 111th Majhafal Brigade – 80th Special Operations Battalion has carried out a heavy attack deep into the Mediterranean Sea. Three boats carrying smugglers, 137 illegal immigrants from Egypt, Sudan, and Bangladesh, have fallen into the grip of the resolute Libyan Army, which shows no mercy and does not abandon its mission." The logo is also clearly visible in the profile photo of the 80th Battalion's TikTok group page. The military group claims to be officially engaged in operations to " counter irregular immigration", and in fact it is directly implicated in the capture of migrants destined for indefinite detention in prison camps located on the Libyan mainland , where they are notoriously subjected to all types of abuse and violence, torture and cruelty, forced labour and ransom demands, as widely documented by various authoritative sources including the official reports of the United Nations Missions in Libya.

What is disconcerting about the incident we witnessed is that it was precisely the soldiers of a unit institutionally affiliated with the Government of National Unity in Tripoli who threw people into the sea, exposing them to the risk of drowning. This effectively forced us—clearly having no other viable alternatives—to urgently rescue them and remove them from the area to take them to a safe place of disembarkation in Europe. These findings demonstrate the unequivocal involvement of Libyan soldiers from the 80th Special Operations Battalion of the 111th Brigade, led by the Undersecretary/Deputy Minister of Defense of Tripoli, Abdul Salam Al-Zoubi, in human trafficking, conducted with particularly violent and brutal methods.

But there's more: Abdul Salam Al-Zoubi is one of the Italian government's privileged interlocutors, one of those with whom they boast of a "fruitful collaboration" in "border management." On September 4th—a few days after the incident that saw the military under his command as the perpetrators of threats against the Mediterranean and violent human trafficking—he was received with full honors by Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi. And, according to authoritative observers of the situation in Libya, he is one of the main "horses" Italy has bet on to replace the now compromised Almasri and his cronies. It would seem also and above all in the "dirty war" against migrants and civilian rescue ships. Is everything okay in Tripoli and Rome?