Leona Blankenstein could not believe what she was hearing when the Libyan coast guard threatened to blast her small plane out of the sky.
The German doctor was in a spotter aircraft for the rescue charity Sea-Watch when she encountered a Fezzan patrol boat as it picked up migrants in Maltese waters on Oct. 25.
“Get away from Libyan territorial [waters], otherwise we’ll shoot you by SAM [surface-to-air] missiles,” said those aboard the vessel, one of several Italy gave to Libya under a controversial EU-backed deal to stop migrants reaching Europe.
Photo: AFP
The Libyans brought the migrants on board before scuttling their rubber boat with incendiary ammunition, Sea-Watch footage showed.
“It happened in just seconds... Their behavior is highly unpredictable, so you never know what they are going to do next,” she said.
The warning “was threat enough for me to leave the area immediately,” she added.
The 2017 deal has faced renewed scrutiny since far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government took office, adopting a hardline stance against asylum seekers rescued at sea.
Despite years of criticism by charities and human rights groups, Italy quietly renewed the accord earlier this month.
Campaigners say that nearly 100,000 people have been intercepted by Libyans since the deal, under which Italy and the EU agreed to train and equip Libya’s coast guard.
The agreement was formed under pressure to manage huge numbers of refugees fleeing to Europe from conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
It also followed a series of deadly shipwrecks, with a record 5,000 people dying or reported missing in the Mediterranean in 2016.
The European Commission has said the accord aims “to prevent the loss of life in the Mediterranean and at the same time to crack down on migrant smuggling and human trafficking networks.”
Last year 2,062 people were reported dead or missing, the International Organization for Migration said.
Centre for European Reform analyst Luigi Scazzieri said that working with other countries to prevent arrivals was a “key emphasis” of European policy.
The Italy-Libya accord proved “very effective” in reducing the number of arrivals — at least initially.
However, charities decry a “Wild West” situation with armed militias posing as the Libyan coast guard and live ammunition used against migrants’ boats in open water.
Critics highlight a lack of accountability, with little public information on who receives the money in Libya.
Meanwhile, many of those intercepted are believed to have ended up in Libyan detention centers.
Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International say many migrants in Libya are tortured, sexually abused or used as slaves.
Libyan authorities deny reports that migrants are abused.
Campaigners also say that EU border agency Frontex, which uses aircraft to spot migrants in distress, helps Libya.
Felix Weiss, spokesperson for the Seabird arm of Sea-Watch, said “the Libyan coast guard is not professional, it needs the EU’s aerial surveillance and guidance to find the migrant boats.”
Human rights lawyer Arturo Salerni said that the “pull back” of migrants from European search and rescue areas to Libya is illegal under EU law “if European states are complicit.”
The Italian government did not reply to requests for comment.
Every year, Italy takes in tens of thousands of people who attempt to cross the central Mediterranean, the world’s deadliest migration route.
It had numerous agreements during the 2000s with late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi on curbing migratory flows, before he was ousted in 2011.
In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Italy for intercepting and forcibly returning people to Libya, prompting a new approach.
After the 2017 deal, rescue charities were “told by Italy to alert the Libyan coast guard instead,” said Chiara Denaro from Alarm Phone, a hotline used by migrants in distress.
The deal quickly attracted criticism, with the UN imposing sanctions for people trafficking on several Libyans in 2018.
In 2019, Italian newspaper L’Avvenire reported that known people trafficker Abd Al Rahman al-Milad was present in Sicily at talks with Italian officials on drawing up the 2017 deal.
Milad was suspended from the Libyan coast guard after being added to the UN’s sanctions list in 2018, but remained involved with “rescuing migrants” the following year, said a UN report cited by L’Avvenire.
Last month, Sea-Watch published images it said proved the Libyan coast guard was collaborating with people smugglers: a vessel pictured twice with different migrants on board three days apart.
That suggested it had returned to Libya and was reused, Sea-Watch said.
The EU has devoted around 59 million euros to boosting the Libyan coast guard’s operational capacity, including training about 500 members between 2015 and 2020, when it stopped.
There are plans for training to resume, but talks are ongoing with the Libyans, “with a substantial focus on human rights and international law,” an EU spokeswoman said.
Italy has earmarked at least 32.5 million euros (US$ 33,7 million) for missions in support of the Libyan coast guard since 2017, humanitarian organization Arci said in a report last year.
In October, investigative journalist Duccio Facchini said that Italy spent another 6.65 million euros on 14 new speedboats for the Libyan coast guard just months earlier.
Amnesty International said it is “disgraceful” that Rome “continues to assist Libyan authorities in violating their people’s human rights.”
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