The Geo Barents , the ship of the NGO Doctors Without Borders, arrived yesterday in Marina di Carrara with 249 migrants rescued off the coast of Libya for 20 days . Of the migrants rescued, 80 are minors (63 males and 17 females, one of which is pregnant and one is the mother of an 11-month-old girl).

The detention, explains Doctors Without Borders , «is for not having observed the instructions of the Libyan coast guard last Saturday and having put the rescued people in danger . But it was the Libyans who attempted to interrupt the rescue by threatening our crew and the castaways. We will appeal." In essence, the captain of the Geo Barents was accused of not having gone to the nearest safe port assigned.

The infringement emerged following the specific checks that the Coast Guard and the Flying Squad carried out at the time of the disembarkation of the illegal immigrants: from the control of the logbook and through comparison with the data relating to the ship's movements recorded by the GPS, it was It was possible to verify how many migrants and in which areas they were loaded. The infringement alleged against Geo Barents falls within the second paragraph of decree no. 1/2023, requested by Minister Piantedosi and refers in this specific case to the choice of the commander not to comply with the requests of the SAR authority (zones for research and rescue at sea - Search and Rescue). The crime was allegedly committed in the waters off the coast of Libya. This is the twentieth detention of a humanitarian ship following the Piantedosi decree of January 2023.

“It is the EU-funded Libyan Coast Guard that puts people's lives in danger, while those who try to save lives are sanctioned,” says Juan Matias Gil, MSF's search and rescue operations representative. "The continuous harassment of NGO rescue ships and the deliberate obstacle to rescue activities at sea by Italy - he adds - are scandalous and will only lead to more deaths at sea".

(Unioneonline/vl)