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Go wherever you want, but not to Italy: Matteo Salvini tells NGO ship

Posted by EU Times on Sep 21st, 2018 // No Comment

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Aid groups MSF and SOS Méditerranée have said that the migrant rescue ship Aquarius was seeking help for 11 migrants they recovered off Libya after refusing to return them to the north African country.

The vessel claimed to have saved ten men and an unaccompanied minor from a sinking boat after attempting to alert Libya’s coastguard who had requested they bring them to one of their patrol vessels.

The Aquarius crew refused saying they could not legally comply as Libyan ports were not considered places of safety, according to SOS Méditerranée, a French NGO.

“The Aquarius 2 [the boat’s official name]has recovered about 10 people in Libyan search and rescue waters, a few miles from the mainland, but refused to cooperate with the coastguard in Tripoli,” Matteo Salvini, Italy’s Interior Minister, tweeted Thursday.

“Now it’s floating in the Mediterranean. I say it again and again: go wherever you want, but not to Italy.”

The migrants, from Pakistan and Ivory Coast, were said to have been picked up by the Aquarius from a sinking boat when they were unsuccessful at alerting Libya’s coastguard.

Salvini closed the country’s ports to migrants in June. Since that time, the Aquarius has been forced to find new locations for the migrants it says they save, landing many in Spanish ports where the socialist government has an open door for migrants.

Gibraltar had revoked the ship’s flag, forcing them to lay up in the French Mediterranean port of Marseille. It has now been registered in Panama.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR has claimed that although numbers of those attempting to cross from north Africa to Europe has dropped significant, the danger of dying during crossing has sharply increased.

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Read More Stories About: Aquarius, Immigrants, Italy, Libya, Matteo Salvini, MSF, Muslims, NGO, Rome, Ship, SOS Mediterranee, UNHCR

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