Four people have been charged with causing the deaths of 203 people when an over-crowded ferry sank off Nungwi, a beach resort north of Zanzibar Island, in the early hours of 10 September.
The captain of the MV Spice Islander I ferry, Said Abdallah Kinyanyite, who was possibly among those drowned, was charged in absentia at the Zanzibar High Court on 16 September. Also charged were one of the ferry’s owners, Yusuf Suleiman Jussa, first officer Abdallah Mohamed Ali and an employee of Zanzibar Ports Authority responsible for passenger inspection, Silima Nyange Silima. The prosecutor said that the accused allowed the ferry to be overloaded with passengers and cargo.
The boat had been travelling between Zanzibar and Pemba to the north and was licensed to carry 600 passengers. It is thought that at the time of the accident over 800 people were on board, about 600 of whom survived. The death toll rose from the initial figure of 197 to 203 some days later, after six bodies were washed up in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.
On the same day as the trial, Tanzanian rescue teams and South African navy divers abandoned their efforts to retrieve more bodies thought to be trapped inside the capsized vessel.
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