Rescued migrants charged with hijacking ship

Three migrants who attempted to migrate irregularly to Europe have been charged in Malta with hijacking a Turkish ship.

The ship crew had rescued over a hundred migrants including men, women and children at sea, and was returning them to Libya. But the El-Hiblu 1, a small oil tanker, was later hijacked by the rescued migrants when they realised it was returning to Libya, where they face torture and abuse in detention centres. It was eventually forced to dock in Malta.

The captain said a European military aircraft had notified him of a number of migrants who were in danger of drowning, and needed urgent assistance.

“I took the people in the boat and there were six who refused to jump in, fearing that I (would) take them back to Libya,” he said.

The captain said the migrants hadn’t noticed that the ship had changed direction towards Libya until they saw Tripoli. He said the migrants “were desperate and absolutely did not want to return” to Libya.

He said, “They all brought heavy metal tools and started to beat and smash the ship and threatened that they would leave the ship in pieces if it continued to Libya. It was horror. I didn’t care much about the boat, but the crew members.”

The captain called the Libyan navy and updated them that he was changing course. He said; “They are going to kill me and kill us if we return. We are leaving.”

Both Italy and Malta initially refused to let the ship dock in their ports. However, it was finally allowed to dock in Malta after a special operations team boarded the ship and returned control to its crew.

The three migrants from Guinea and the Ivory Coast and face a heavy prison sentence if they are found guilty. They have been denied bail because they have no means to pay and have no ties in Malta.

Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini praised the Maltese armed forces for boarding the ship. “They are not shipwrecked but pirates, they will only see Italy through a telescope,” Salvini said about the migrants.

He said that “immigration is managed by criminals and should be blocked by any legal means necessary,” and called the incident “the first act of piracy on the high seas with migrants.”

However, NGOs like Sea Watch are saying the incident cannot be called piracy because the migrants were forcefully being returned to a place where they face torture and abuse.

“The horrifying conditions for people in Libya have been widely documented by a wide array of human rights monitors, including UN agencies. Migrants and refugees are known to be systematically subjected to arbitrary imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, kidnapping, extortion, slavery and even murder. It is entirely legitimate for people found in distress at sea to reject being returned to Libya,” said Sea Watch.

In 2018 alone, Libya’s coastguard intercepted or rescued about 15,000 migrants trying to reach Europe.

TMP – 10/04/2019

Photo: Steve Estvanik / Shutterstock. A small tanker at the port of Valleta, Malta.