2023-07-29 10:21:00
Fati Dosso and her six-year-old daughter Marie were found dead of thirst on the Tunisia-Libya border. The father of the family testifies.
They died in total indifference. Fati Dosso and her six-year-old daughter Marie were found dead of thirst not far from the Tunisia-Libya border. The two migrants wandered in the desert until they died of thirst following being deported.
A terrible photo of their lifeless bodies went around the world. A snapshot taken by a border guard who ended up on the front page of Osservatore Romano. Their husband and father Pato, devastated, testifies to the Parisian.
The little family tried several times to cross the Mediterranean in the hope of finding a better life in Europe. In all, they attempted five times to reach the Old Continent. “We wanted to provide an education for our child there,” says the widower. Another objective is to keep their young daughter away from Côte d’Ivoire, where the mother is from. “She feared that Marie would be circumcised, like her,” says the father to the Ile-de-France daily.
After losing all their money at the hands of smugglers, the family seeks to reach Tunisia on foot in July, “under a blazing sun”. Once they arrive in Ben-Gardane, they are intercepted by the police, “beaten and robbed”. All before being sent back to the desert, totally destitute.
“We were told: ‘Walk straight ahead, towards Libya and don’t come back to Tunisia, you are the ones who are making the mess!’ On the horizon, we saw antennas, so we went towards it,” he testifies.
“We were reduced to drinking our urine”
Without the necessary to cross the desert, the family quickly found themselves dehydrated: “We had no more water, we were reduced to drinking our urine”. Exhausted by the heat, the father had to separate from his family, who continued on without him. As they continued walking alone, he got stuck in the hot sand.
It was finally two Sudanese who found him, gave him something to drink and accompanied him to the town of Zouara. The father thought he would find his wife and child there, “but there was no one”. After some research, it is finally through a Facebook publication that he will learn the terrible news. It was regarding the photo.
A terrible cliché that he immediately recognized. “How might we have come to this? A bottle of water might have saved my daughter!”, He denounces. Since then, the life of the thirties seems broken. “I don’t have the strength for anything, except maybe to kill myself,” he told Le Parisien. He will be received for a psychological consultation by Doctors Without Borders on Sunday.
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