The International Criminal Court at The Hague has been asked to investigate Prime Minister Robert Abela and his predecessor Joseph Muscat, as well as other European politicians, over alleged crimes against humanity through the pushback of migrants to Libya.
The European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, a German NGO, on Wednesday said it had called for Abela, Muscat and other European leaders and officials to be investigated by the court over what it said was “individual criminal responsibility” for the alleged pushback of irregular migrants to Libya.
The EU’s former foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, Italy’s former interior minister Matteo Salvino, as well as his successor, and the former executive director of European border agency Frontex, Fabrice Leggeri, are also named, along with the two Maltese politicians.
The NGO is alleging that the politicians conspired with Libya’s coastguard to illegally push back migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe.
The complaint accuses the politicians of committing several “crimes against humanity in the form of the severe deprivation of physical liberty” between 2018 and 2021 by systematically intercepting boats in the Mediterranean and sending refugees back into detention in Libya.
The NGO has submitted multiple radio calls and intercepts with migrant vessels collected by another German NGO, Sea-Watch.
Times of Malta has reached out to both the Auberge de Castille and Muscat for comment.
A deal exposed
In 2019, Times of Malta exposed how Malta had secretly negotiated an agreement with Libya that sees the Armed Forces of Malta coordinating with the Libyan coastguard to intercept migrants headed towards the island and returned to the North African country.
The agreement for “mutual cooperation” was struck between members of the AFM and the Libyan coastguard, with government official Neville Gafà acting as an intermediary.
The following year, a group of 52 asylum seekers filed constitutional proceedings against the Maltese authorities, calling for an effective remedy for the alleged breach of rights they suffered in a pushback to Libya.
The asylum seekers were picked up by a fishing boat on Easter Sunday of 2020 and then returned to Libya, where they were thrown into detention. Five people had died and seven were missing by the time they were picked up at sea.
That case had made international headlines, with the prime minister subsequently admitting that Malta had coordinated the migrants' return while insisting it was "not a pushback".
Diminishing migrant arrivals
The number of migrants crossing the Central Mediterranean from Libya declined dramatically over the past years, from almost 120,000 migrants in 2017 to around 23,000 in 2018. In the years since then, the number of migrants arriving from Libya diminished even further with close to no arrivals documented.
While Malta received few or no migrants at the height of the migration crisis in the Central Mediterranean between 2014 and 2017 when Italy was in charge of the rescue effort and accepted the disembarkation of virtually all migrants rescued, the tide turned around 2018 when a right-wing government was elected in Italy.
Human rights groups have repeatedly called on the EU to stop its policy of allowing migrants to be returned to Libya, where they face hellish conditions in detention centres, according to UN organisations.