The 89 migrants, including woman and children, were reportedly first taken on board the Italian Navy patrol boat Orione which took them to an off-shore oil production platform owned by Agip located within Libyan territorial waters where the migrants were transferred to a Libyan vessel which then took them to Libya.
COE Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg criticised the action. “[It is] absolutely right” that not everyone who arrives in Italy has the right to asylum, but ”they certainly have the right to ask for it”. ”With [their immediate return to Libya], this is denied to them, as is the possibility that their claims are evaluated according to the principles of human rights.”
Click here and here and here for ANSA, Di-Ve, and Times of Malta reports.
MIGRANTS AT SEA 