On the 13th of April 2024, the Coalition for the ElHiblu3 presented Abdalla Bari, Amara Kromah, and Abdul Kader with the Human Rights Defenders Award at the University of Malta, in Valletta. The three, known as the El Hiblu 3, received this award for the bravery and solidarity they showed when facing the threat of a pushback to Libya in 2019.
On 26-27 March 2022, we organised a Free the ElHiblu3 conference in Valletta on the third anniversary of the arrival of the El Hiblu tanker in Malta. More than 80 participants came together from local and transnational organisations.
This book is about the ElHiblu3 and their struggle for justice. It documents the context and course of the trial against Abdalla, Amara, and Kader, placing it within wider attempts to criminalise people on the move within the European Union. The book includes contributions from Abdalla, Amara, and Kader, their lawyers, and their allies in Malta and beyond.
The video documents the arrival of the ElHiblu3 and their fellow travellers to Malta. It explores the criminalisation that Abdalla, Amara, and Kader were immediately exposed to, and draws on testimony from those who made this journey.
In early 2020, we collected testimonies of nine of the 108 survivors, who shared their experiences of the situation on the El Hiblu 1 oil tanker. They all declared their solidarity with the three accused teenagers, Abdalla, Amara, and Kader. These testimonies were a fundamental beginning of our solidarity campaign with the ElHiblu3.
Abdalla, Amara and Kader arrived in Malta in March 2019, having been rescued from a sinking rubber boat in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. At just 15, 16 and 19 years old, their dream of arriving in Europe had come to pass, yet a new nightmare was just beginning.