Abdelkarim Alla F. Hamad was only 20 when he traveled to Europe in 2015 in hopes of becoming a professional football player. However, his dream never came true; instead, he found himself in a prison cell -- with a 30-year sentence.

Hamad was convicted, alongside a number of other defendants, on multiple murder charges as well as for violating multiple migration laws in Italy after 49 migrants had died from suffocation on an overcrowded boat in August 2015.

After spending 10 years in prison, Hamad and four of his co-defendants can now return to living a regular life after presidential pardon -- though their dreams of making it as professional footballers will by now have faded forever.

Engine failure results in dozens of deaths

At the time of his trial, his defence attorneys had argued that Hamad was not a migrant smuggler, and that he had only found himself in an impossible situation at the time. However, that defence ultimately failed, as did claims of blaming any alleged actions on his youth.

According to his own testimony, Hamad had paid 1,000 euros to smugglers outside the Libyan capital Tripoli to take him and his two friends across the Mediterranean Sea, with each of them hoping to make it in Europe's professional football leagues.

After several hours of navigating in the sea on August 14, 2015 something reportedly went wrong, resulting in the death by suffocation of 49 people, as engine fumes reached the passengers on the overcrowded hold of the boat; 313 people meanwhile survived the tragedy, including Hamad.

The victims and survivors of the tragedy were found later by a Norwegian vessel, located about 220 kilometers south of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa -- not far off the Libyan coast.

First a witness, then a suspect

At first, investigators questioned the young Libyan national as a witness in the criminal case before placing him and his two friends officially under investigation.

Two years later, a court sentenced him to 30 years in prison, ruling that Hamad and his co-defendants were responsible for the deaths.

That sentence was upheld by an appeals court in 2020, and subsequently by the supreme Court of Cassation, Italy's highest appeals court.

No prisoner exchange with Libya

The case was further exacerbated in its early when there was a lack of cooperation with authorities in Benghazi, Libya, who failed to reach a deal with Italy to exchange three of the convicted defendants, including Hamad, for 18 Italian fishermen who had been imprisoned in Libya.

The 18 Italian men were on a fishing vessel that had departed from the Sicilian town of Mazara del Vallo, which had been seized by Libyan authorities along with its fishermen passengers for allegation of fishing in Libyan waters.

The particularly harsh sentence of 30 years may have been used by Italian authorities to try convince Libya to work more actively on an exchange; however, Libya was still in a state of post-civil war instability, as rival factions began competing for power over the country in a struggle which persists until today.