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AFP
August 6, 2013
Malta refused Tuesday to allow 102 migrants rescued from a leaking dinghy on to the island despite pressure from the European Commission to let them disembark on humanitarian grounds.
The migrants, including a four-month-old baby and four pregnant women, were rescued from their badly damaged inflatable boat on Monday by the Liberian-flagged Salamis oil tanker 80 kilometres (50 miles) off the Libyan coast.
The Maltese interior ministry said in a statement that the authorities had told the captain of the Salamis he had no permission to enter Malta’s territorial waters.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem had said that the refugees should be allowed to land on Malta “as soon as possible.”
The Maltese government claimed that a patrolling Italian navy ship had ordered the Salamis to take the migrants to the nearest available port, in this case in Libya.
The alleged refusal by the captain to obey this order “created an expectation that Malta should shoulder international obligations which would have never been incumbent upon it had the master complied,” Malta’s deputy attorney general Donatella Frendo Dimech said in a statement.
