On 30 November, The Guardian published an article by journalists Philip Oltermann and Angela Giuffrida entitled ‘European politicians accused of conspiring with Libyan coastguard to push back refugees’. The article reports that several high-profile European politicians from the EU, Italy, and Malta, have been named as subjects of a criminal complaint at the international criminal court (ICC) by the German NGO the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). Olterman and Giuffrida write that these politicians are being alleged of conspiring ‘with Libya’s coastguard to illegally push back refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe’ from 2018-2021, with the ECCHR accusing the politicians of ‘crimes against humanity in the form of the severe deprivation of physical liberty’. The complaint references a deal between the Italian government and Libya from February 2017 whereby the Italian government offered to fund and train Libya’s coastguard to intercept refugees. ECCHR also submitted evidence of 12 incidents where refugee boasts were intercepted, including radio calls and aerial photographs that Olterman and Giuffrida says ‘[points] to a collusion between European authorities and Libyan coastguards’. Olterman and Giuffrida spoke to Marco Minniti, one of the Italian politicians who was interior minister at the time of the aforementioned deal. Minniti told The Guardian that ‘I don’t know [about the] complaint. I will evaluate it, like the other interior ministers from 2017 until today’. In addition to Minniti, some of those included among the politicians listed in the claim are the EU’s former foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, Italy’s current and former interior ministers, and the current and former prime ministers of Malta.
Read the full article here.