Dutch MP in Malta for failed migrant rescue inquiry

Dutch MP Tineke Strik is in Malta for interviews with refugees and officials from the Armed Forces of Malta, where she is heading a Council of Europe inquiry into claims that NATO, Italian and Maltese forces ignored distress calls from a migrant boat back in April.

NATO had denied the report claiming its military units failed to save dozens of migrants fleeing north Africa by boat which had been adrift in the ocean for 16 days, leading to the deaths of 61 people.

British newspaper The Guardian said despite a distress call from the boat to the Italian coastguard and a military helicopter and NATO warship, no rescue effort was attempted. It said the boat, carrying 72 people including women, children and political refugees, ran into trouble after leaving Tripoli, the Libyan capital, for the Italian island of Lampedusa on March 25.

By the time the vessel drifted ashore at Zlitan, Libya, on 10 April, all but 11 passengers were dead, and another died after being imprisoned by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, the country's leader.

The paper said the migrants used a satellite phone to call Fr Moses Zerai, an Eritrean priest in Rome who runs a refugee rights organisation, who then alerted the Italian coastguard.

Strik has said it is very difficult to establish which actors should coordinate search and rescue, especially since in this case the boat in distress was in the Libyan SAR zone.

"Although this zone was already not safe before the NATO bombings, at the time that Libya was being bombed it was clear to everyone that there was no Libyan authority who could be held responsible or who would take up search and rescue in practice," Strik told the European Council of Refugees and Exiles in an interview.

"There should be no gaps in the division of responsibility and yet that is exactly what you see here. The Italian border guards told us that if the boat would have been in their area, they would have ensured that the people on the boat were saved or made sure someone else would come to their rescue. In this case, the Italian border guards claim that it was not their responsibility to rescue the boat so instead they sent a message to ships at sea to keep an eye for a boat that was in trouble. In any case, they felt no responsibility whatsoever to verify afterwards what had happened.

"Someone probably picked up the rescue orders because we know that after the notice of the request for help there was a helicopter circling above the boat which came back after a few hours with bottled water and biscuits. The people on the boat thought they would be saved but then it turned out that the helicopter did not return.

"Therefore, it is possible to assume that there was a ship not far from that boat in distress that had seen the boat but did not take actions to rescue those in need. It seems very strange that if a specific operation is performed by helicopter to verify whether there is really a boat in distress, that no action is taken afterwards. It seems to me very clear that the picture from the helicopter was that they needed help: the survivors made signals and held a baby up to show that there were also children on board. "The survivors made signals and held a baby up to show that there were also children on board."