Selamawi: Alive somewhere in Europe

This article was orginally posted by Gabriele Del Grande in Fortress Europe after Selamawi confirms he is alive and he is safe in eastern Europe.

We met at church in Tripoli three years ago, during my first trip to Libya with Roman Herzog in November 2008. And once we realized it was not a guy like the others. He agreed to invite us to lunch at his house, taking the risk of being intercepted by the Libyan secret service men that followed. And before you say goodbye, we had delivered the appeal he had written four months earlier with five other students of Asmara, with whom he had spent a long period of imprisonment in Misrata , Libya, after they were arrested en route to Lampedusa. Since then Selamawi had never ceased to cooperate with Fortress Europe. It was one of the most active community informants Eritrea in Libya. And because of its militancy we were able to spread important news , especially at the time of the rejections and the riots in Libyan prisons. This is despite the threats that Eritrea's embassy officials had sent not so subtly, letting them know that they knew that behind the pseudonym Selamawi was his name and he had to stop yelling so much interest in politics. But he has continued undeterred. Translating the articles of Fortress Europe in Tigrinya , the Eritrean diaspora to. And updating his blog from the Internet point of Tripoli. Until one day it disappeared into nothing.

The last time we felt the phone was on February 24 . Benghazi had fallen into the hands of the insurgents after a week of blood, and in Tripoli the demonstrations were suppressed with the firing on the crowd and the militia house to house to flush out opponents . In that climate of terror, while hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to leave Libya, Selamawi me that Tunisia was too dangerous to reach, because the blacks out of Tripoli was to be mistaken for mercenaries and killed Gadhafi. So, he concluded, would wait to see if it had reopened the route to Lampedusa groped for the lot. Then silence. For three and a half months I have not heard from him again. raqm the Ar-matlub muqfil . I had memorized the Libyan automatic sms. The number of the person you call may be switched off or unreachable. Meanwhile, at sea there were hundreds of dead, week after week. And I must admit that I was starting to make me a reason. That there were other explanations. And Selamawi was dead. Drowned along with hundreds of other boys from the ports of Tripoli in search of safe beaches on the north shore. I was now sure, because I was so sure that if he were still alive somewhere would contact me in one way or another. Until this morning I had confirmation. Inbox. Message of 08:27. Subject: " From Timosoara ". I knew that I would contact if he were still alive. Do not ask me how, but Selamawi arrived in Romania and is doing well. And I hope that soon we can all go back to calling him by his real name. Maybe in the corridors of an English university, where Selamawi dreams of continuing her studies in marine biology.