Brother: Accused boat pilot was forced

The Tunisian man accused of piloting a migrant boat that sank off Libya, killing more than 700 people, is himself a migrant who was forced at gunpoint to captain the ship because of his experience as a fisherman, his brother said on Saturday.

"My brother was recruited by Libyans to work in a cafe in Libya a few weeks ago, but afterward he was forced under threat by smugglers to pilot the voyage because he knows a little about the sea and worked with our father fishing," the brother, Makrem Mahjoub, said by telephone.

Italian authorities say the man, whose name was given in court as Mohammed Ali Malek, 27, was in charge of the heavily overloaded fishing boat that capsized shortly before midnight on April 18 with hundreds of African and Bangladeshi migrants locked below deck.