Families of 39 illegal immigrants call on the president Bouteflika to retrieve them from Tunisian prison

The Tunisian President’s advisor and other top officials including the Justice Minister, Tunis public prosecutor and the chief of security Mesbah Ben Khalid have asked the families of the 39 illegal immigrants, detained since 18 months in a Tunisian prison, to call on the highest authorities to sort out the case.

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• The details of this tragic events go back to 2008 when 43 illegal immigrants including 39 from the popular compound of “Baraki”, Algiers, 3 Tunisians and a Moroccan decided to set sail on four boats from the beaches of Annaba, eastern Algeria, heading for the Italian island Sardinia.
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• On their route to the island, when of the boats broke down at large due to rough sea and strong winds forcing it to drift towards the Tunisian territorial waters. The Tunisian coast guards have intercepted and handed them over to the security forces in the wake of skirmishes that broke out between the illegal immigrants and the Tunisian authorities.
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• After being detained in a isolated border town, the illegal immigrants were accused of breach of the peace and involvement to terrorist groups. 
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• One of the illegal immigrants has contacted his family on the phone few moments before his arrest informing them that they were intercepted by coast guards but declined to give their nationality, sources have revealed.
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• The families have used all the means to reach the truth including several correspondences to the Presidential Palace, the Foreign Ministry and the Consultative Committee for Human Rights but didn’t get any feed back.
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• In a last ditch effort to get news from their beloved, the families have called on the Algerian President to intervene, knowing that one of the mothers has lost two of her sons in this tragic event and is know in critical health conditions.
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