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The course of action is apparently clear. On Monday of this week, around 16:30, the Italian ship "Asso 28" took on board a boat overflowing 101 people on board, including 5 children and 5 pregnant women.
The ship floated about 57 nautical miles from the Libyan capital Tripoli and 105 nautical miles from the most southern Italian island of Lampedusa, but only 1.5 nautical miles from the offshore platform "Sabratha". It will be used to pump gas for the joint venture Mellitah Oil & Gas owned by Libya and the Italian oil and gas group Eni and supplied by ships such as the "Asso 28".
After the distress call, the supply vessel The Libyan Coast Guard, stationed on all platforms off the Libyan coast, says the shipping company. He had, as well as the representation of the group Eni, conducted the rescue operation in "total autonomy".
Around 4:30 pm, a Libyan Coast Guard boat added and escorted the "Asso 28" to the port of Tripoli. There, the pbadengers were first transferred to the Coast Guard boat and then brought back to shore. According to the shipping company, there have been no special events, including no demonstrations of migrants.
End of history? No, there are too many questions:
- Who received and transmitted the emergency call? Is not known. As a rule, pbadengers on the life-threatening Mediterranean crossing received the Italian Coast Guard's phone number from their smugglers.
- When the call was made, why did she take it immediately?
- Who gave the order "Asso 28" to bring the castaways to Tripoli? The Libyan authorities? They have no command authority on an Italian ship.
- Does the captain of "Asso 28" know that he may have been prosecuted? Libya's ports are considered by the EU as "unsafe refuges" and migrants can not be unloaded.
- Did refugees have the opportunity to apply for political asylum on the ship? Otherwise, it could be another offense under the law.
- Did pbadengers even know where they landed? About 20 days ago failed attempt to repatriate shipwrecked in Libya to their resistance. They were taken on the Italian ship "Diciotti" to Trapani, Italy, where they were, on the instructions of the president, on land. Why did refugees aboard "Asso 28" land quietly in Tripoli?
Maybe the action was quite different. The first report on a boat in distress came from the Rome rescue center, says Nicola Fratoianni, leftist Liberi e Uguali (in German: free and equal).
Contact with Italian authorities failed
He was pretty close to the scene, aboard the Spanish "Open Arms", one of the last private aid agencies ( NGOs) to stay in this Mediterranean region. Transmitted by the rescue boat to Malta, the "Open Arms" had received the message from Rome and set sail on the indicated maritime area. However, attempts to contact the Italian authorities have failed.
Shortly after, they heard a radio message from "Asso 28", said Fratoianni, it was necessary to "follow the instructions of the platform". According to Fratoianni, the decision not to go to Italy, but to Libya, was taken by Eni.
A coded game?
For the politician, it is clear that the action was apparently both the Italian Coast Guard – by a deliberate non-activity – and the Italian supplier of oil and gas involved. A game prepared to send back the refugees?
If that were the case, the people involved would be liable to prosecution. Also the state of Italy. "For," said Marina Castellaneta, professor of international law at the University of Bari, according to all international conventions, the state must allow anyone to seek asylum and to protect that person as long as the procedure continues. The state has an obligation to prevent ships under its flag from simply returning those people.
The United Nations Refugee Commission and the Council of Europe also stress that under international law, wrecked migrants can only be "safe havens". In Libya, there is no "safe" constitutional port.
Even the heavyweight of President Roberto Fico, Judge Parliament, believes that "migrants should not be brought to Libya where their human rights are not protected". Back to Tripoli
But neither the lawyers, nor Fico, nor the other skeptics manage to defuse the new strong man of Italy.
Matteo Salvini, Interior Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and especially Lega's boss in the long-term election campaign, just had the right excitement. First, the Italian coastguard did not coordinate the action and did not participate. On the other hand, the Libyan Coast Guard had "rescued and sent back 611 migrants in recent hours," he wrote in a Facebook post, "NGOs protest, traffickers lose their business."
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