A migrant, in his 20s, was found dead on a ferry sailing from Tunis to Palermo, reported the Italian press on Tuesday (September 8). The young man had hidden himself inside a car that boarded the ferry, in order to reach Italy via irregular means.
The young man found dead is reported to have hidden himself in the back of a car to escape police checks. The Tunisian, was around 25 years old and didn’t have any documents. He was found dead on board a ferry traveling from Tunis to Palermo, in Sicily, reported the Italian press on September 8.
The owner of the vehicle was a Tunisian engineering student in Florence. She alerted the ferry crew when she noticed the person hidden in the back seat of her car was no longer showing signs of life.
The young woman, who has no criminal record, was detained by police upon the ferry’s arrival in Palermo and taken into custody. The police charged her with facilitating irregular immigration.
Prosecutors have also ordered an autopsy on the victim to determine the cause and hour of his death.
According to the investigation’s initial findings, the car – an Audi A6 – contained a storage compartment used to conceal the young man when he boarded in Tunisia, reported the Italian newspaper Le Corriere della Sera. Both the victim and the driver’s mobile phones were seized and will be analyzed to reconstruct the journey’s route and determine whether other individuals were involved.
The investigators are trying to determine if it’s an isolated case or part of an organized human trafficking network.
A similar case
A similar case took place in Sicily in 2024. A Tunisian migrant was found dead on the "Splendid" ferry which was sailing between La Goulette (near Tunis) and the Port of Palermo.
He had hidden himself under a parked truck to avoid being detected by the authorities, but was crushed by the vehicle during disembarkation.
Italy is a regular point of entry to the European Union for thousands of migrants searching for a better life. They usually attempt to reach the country by sea, which involves the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean. The Italian island of Lampedusa is just over a hundred kilometers away from the Tunisian coast.
Yet the number of arrivals in Italy has plummeted this year. Since January 1, around 21,000 migrants have managed to reach Italian soil, compared to 47,000 during the same period in 2025. Throughout 2025, around 66,000 people entered Italy through irregular means.