Maltese armed forces take control of the ship, escorting 100 people to port near Valletta
Armed forces stand onboard the Turkish oil tanker El Hiblu 1, which was hijacked by migrants, in Valletta, Malta, on March 28, 2019.A group of migrants desperate not to go back to Libya made it safely to Europe on Thursday after commandeering the oil tanker that rescued them at sea – a drama that underlined contradictions in Europe’s migration policies and could discourage future rescues.
The German humanitarian group Sea-Eye said its rescue ship, the Alan Kurdi, was in the area of the El Hiblu 1 when it heard radio communications between the tanker and a European aircraft monitoring the seas. Migrants have long reported that commercial ships either ignore smugglers’ boats in distress, or merely stop to give them water, said Hassiba Hadj-Sahraoui, humanitarian affairs adviser with Doctors Without Borders. Similar incidents could accelerate the trend.
The European Union has been training the Libyan coast guard in the hope that it will prevent migrants from entering international waters, where they have routinely been rescued, either by commercial ships or those run by humanitarian groups filling in the void after member countries significantly scaled down an EU operation in the Mediterranean.
While Europe is reducing its own rescue mission, Italy and Malta have refused to accept aid group rescue ships in their ports. That has led to offshore standoffs with boats loaded with migrants, often weak from their journey and mistreatment in Libya, while EU nations haggle over their fate. Naval tracking signals show that the tanker was headed straight toward Libya when it deviated from its course, presumably for the rescue. After resuming toward Libya, it abruptly turned northward, suggesting the moment the hijackers took over, heading toward the island nation of Malta or Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa.
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