The charity boat 'taking deliveries' of migrants from people traffickers: Undercover officers capture criminals 'escorting' vessels to aid ships bound for Italy

* Photographs show criminals 'escorting' vessels packed with asylum seekers
* The asylum seekers were then seen being transferred to aid boats bound for Italy
* German charity Jugend Rettet is accused of towing boats used to ferry migrants
* The revelations emerged after investigators impounded one of their vessels

Daily Mail

By Mario Ledwith, Brussels Correspondent

4 August 2017

A charity boat operating in the Mediterranean allegedly colluded with people smugglers to accept multiple 'deliveries' of migrants, investigators have revealed.

Photographs captured by undercover officers show the criminals 'escorting' vessels packed with asylum seekers before being transferred to aid boats bound for Italy.

The images emerged after Italian authorities carried out their first seizure of a rescue boat on suspicion of aiding illegal immigration.

One photograph appears to show a smuggler waving off a boatload of migrants after travelling alongside them to within the reach of rescuers.

German charity Jugend Rettet is also accused of towing boats used to ferry migrants back towards Libya, where most migrants hoping to reach Europe depart, to be reused by smugglers.

The revelations emerged after investigators took the unprecedented move of impounding the aid organisation's vessel, Iuventa, at Lampedusa on Wednesday.

Details about the alleged collusion were contained in documents outlining the case prepared by prosecutors in Sicily following months of accusations about charities co-operating with smugglers.

German charity Jugend Rettet is also accused of towing boats used to ferry migrants back towards Libya, where most migrants hoping to reach Europe depart, to be reused by smugglers.

The revelations emerged after investigators took the unprecedented move of impounding the aid organisation's vessel, Iuventa, at Lampedusa on Wednesday.

Details about the alleged collusion were contained in documents outlining the case prepared by prosecutors in Sicily following months of accusations about charities co-operating with smugglers.

Ambrogio Cartosio, the chief prosecutor from the Sicilian city of Trapani who is behind the investigation, said that no arrests had been made and that inquiries are continuing.

'We have evidence of encounters between traffickers, who escorted illegal immigrants to the Iuventa, and members of the boat's crew,' he said but added that there was no evidence that charity members received any money from the traffickers.

He said that their motivation was 'humanitarian'.

The investigation, launched in October 2016, centres on three specific incidents involving the 100ft vessel, but investigators are analysing other aspects of the charity's operations.

Prosecutors are said to have gathered evidence from an undercover police officer working on another boat, along with evidence from workers on Save the Children's Vos Hestia vessel.

The charity, which means 'youth rescues', refused to comment on the precise allegations but said in a statement that the 'rescue of human life is and will be our top priority'.

Details of the investigation emerged amid a row between the Italian government and the eight charities operating in the Mediterranean over a controversial code of conduct issued by Rome.

Senior Italian officials yesterday insisting that charities who do not sign up will be blocked from undertaking rescue missions unless the code is adhered to.

It is unclear how the threats to the charities would be enforced. Experts say a blockade could contradict international law which says vessels have a obligation to help those who are in distress.

Charities are responsible for between 35 and 40 per cent of rescues in the area.


Source:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4759320/The-charity-boat-taking-migrants-people-traffickers.html

Italy seizes NGO rescue boat for allegedly aiding illegal migration

Reuters

By Wladimiro Pantaleone

2 August 2017

PALERMO, Italy (Reuters) - Italian coastguards seized a migrant rescue boat operated by a German aid group in the Mediterranean suspected of aiding illegal immigration from Libya, a prosecutor said on Wednesday.

Video showed the Iuventa, which is run by Jugend Rettet, arriving at the island of Lampedusa surrounded by several coastguard vessels after it was stopped at sea before dawn.

Police inspected the ship as soon as it docked and checked the crew passports. They later took charge of the boat.

Jugend Rettet said on Twitter it had received no information about the investigation. It could not be reached for further comment.

It was the first time Italian police have seized a humanitarian boat. The move came amidst growing suspicion over the role non-governmental organizations are playing in picking up migrants off the Libya coast and bringing them to Italian ports.

Ambrogio Cartosio, chief prosecutor in the western Sicilian city of Trapani, told a news conference his investigation into Jugend Rettet was ongoing and no one had yet been charged.

"The evidence is serious," Cartosio said. "We have evidence of encounters between traffickers, who escorted illegal immigrants to the Iuventa, and members of the boat's crew."

Italian media reported the boat had two Syrians aboard who were taken to a refugee center, but that could not be immediately confirmed.

"TAXI SERVICE"

Cartosio said there was no indication that Jugend Rettet had received any money from the Libya-based traffickers.

"It would be fantasy to say there was a coordinated plan between the NGOs and the Libyan traffickers," he said.

Cartosio told a parliamentary committee in May that he had suspicions about certain humanitarian groups because some rescue crew seemed to know in advance where to locate the flimsy boats crowded with migrants.

Looking to regulate eight non-governmental groups which regularly hunt for migrants in the southern Mediterranean, the Italian government asked them this week to sign a code of conduct, including a demand that they carry an armed policemen on board their boats.

Jugend Rettet, which describes itself as an organization of young Europeans, was one of five groups that refused to sign up, but Cartosio denied a suggestion that there was any link between this refusal and the boat's seizure.

The 5-Star Movement, which polls say is now the country's biggest party, have accused NGOs of offering a "taxi" service to migrants, while the rightist Northern League party has said all their ships should be impounded.

The humanitarian groups say they are only interested in saving lives, warning that thousands of people would die if they were not out at sea. Despite their efforts, 2,200 migrants have died so far this year trying to reach Europe from north Africa.

Looking to turn the screws on the traffickers, Italy's parliament authorized on Wednesday a limited naval mission to help Libya's coastguard curb migrant flows.

Jugend Rettet says on its website it started patrolling the Mediterranean in July 2016 and has rescued 6,526 people in its first year of action.

"We want to put pressure on state actors to enforce the fundamental right to life and security even in the Mediterranean," the group says.

Additional reporting and writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Alison Williams

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-sweden-idUSKBN1AR1ST

Italy seizes German group's rescue boat in immigration probe

The Associated Press

2 August 2017


ROME — Italian authorities ordered a German group's migrant rescue vessel seized Wednesday, alleging that its crew took on migrants directly from smugglers' boats near Libya's coast.

The vessel operated by Jugend Rettet was seized in the port of Lampedusa, a tiny fishing island off Sicily, where many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants rescued at sea in the last few years are taken.

While investigators suspect "the crime of clandestine immigration" was committed by some of the Jugend Rettet boat's crew, prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio told reporters that "my personal conviction was that the motive is humanitarian, exclusively humanitarian."

The preventive seizure of the Dutch-flagged Iuventa was based on evidence that emerged from three episodes in which crew members had contact with human smugglers operating boats crowded with migrants, Cartosio said. One happened in September 2016, two in June.

"There were contacts, meetings, understandings," between the group's boat and the smugglers, the prosecutor, who is based in the Sicilian port city of Trapani, said.

The passengers on the human traffickers' boats "weren't saved" by the Iuventa, he alleged. Instead, migrants "were handed over" to the German group's 33-meter (about 110-foot) -long boat by smugglers who escorted the migrants toward the Iuventa, the prosecutor said.

Later the migrants were transferred to Italian military vessels or other non-profit vessels to be taken to Italian ports, Cartosio said.

Police in Trapani said the Iuventa "is regularly devoted to the rescue of migrants near the Libyan coast" and that an investigation opened in October has uncovered information to suggest the vessel was used "to aid and abet clandestine immigration."

Jugend Rettet, a group based in Berlin, is mainly made up of young volunteers. Its website says its volunteers' "motivation derives from the will to rescue lives and to improve the humanitarian situation on the Mediterranean."

The group said on its Facebook page Wednesday that it went to Lampedusa on instructions from the Rome-based maritime rescue co-ordinationcentre after being asked to help in a search-and-rescue mission on Tuesday.

"As it happened during other stops at this port, the crew was questioned by the local police, which also entered the ship," Jugend Rettet said. After a warrant-authorized search of the ship, authorities seized the Iuventa, which will eventually be taken to the main island of Sicily.

Cartosio stressed that no individual members of the crew had been charged and the investigation was ongoing to see which of them might have made contact with smugglers at sea.

"There is no indication (the crew) was paid," by smugglers, "nor is there any element to make us think there is a stable tie between the ship and Libyan traffickers,' Cartosio said.

Any allegation that contacts between Jugend Rettet's boat and the boats transporting migrants resulted from "co-ordinated planning" is tantamount to "science fiction," Cartosio said.

A judge in Trapani ordered the preventive seizure upon prosecutors' request.

A few months ago, prosecutors in Trapani and in Catania, another Sicilian city, said they suspected some non-governmental organizations which rescue migrants, were also essentially aiding traffickers.

Jugend Rettet was one of several NGOs which declined this week to sign on to new rules promoted by Italy's interior minister and aimed at ensuring rescue groups don't end up effectively helping human traffickers.

The smugglers crowd flimsy rubber dinghies or aging fishing boats with migrants, essentially counting on European or Italian military patrol boats, NGO rescue vessels or passing cargo ships to pluck the passengers to safety and bring them to Italian shores.

Objections to the new rules included fears that armed Italian military or police personnel would come aboard the NGO vessels, compromising the groups' humanitarian missions.

With elections due in 2018, Premier Paolo Gentiloni's centre-left government is becoming bolder in trying to hold back the tide of migrants entering Italy. Many Italians have grown impatient with the number of newcomers awaiting decisions on asylum requests in their communities.

Italy's Parliament on Wednesday approved having Italian military vessels help Libya's coast guard stop smuggling boats from leaving Libya for Europe. Italy's defence minister has insisted the mission won't be a naval blockade, although lawmakers from the anti-migrant Northern League, an opposition party, are demanding just that.

A spokesman for the Libyan navy, Ayoub Gassim, told The Associated Press the Italians will provide "technical assistance" at Libya's request and that a patrol boat arrived in Tripoli Wednesday.

___

Rami Musa contributed from Benghazi, Libya.


Source: http://www.timescolonist.com/italy-seizes-german-group-s-rescue-boat-in-immigration-probe-1.21552009

Italy seizes German-operated migrant rescue boat claiming it is being used to help ‘clandestine immigration’ from Libya to Europe

 
* The boat, operated by pro-migrant group Jugend Rettet, is being held in Sicily
* Authorities in Italy claim it was supporting illegal immigration from Libya
* Move comes as lawmakers back plans to use warships to block migrant boats
* Amnesty International warns move puts migrants at risk of torture in Libya

VIDEO: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/embed/video/1512185.html

Mailonline

By Dave Burke

2 August 2017

Italian authorities have seized a migrant rescue boat, accusing its owner of aiding 'clandestine immigration'.

The 100ft-long vessel, operated by pro-migrant group Jugend Rettet, is currently being held at a Sicilian port.

The move comes after Italian lawmakers approved controversial plans to use warships to prevent migrant boats reaching Europe from Libya - a move branded a 'recipe for more suffering' by Amnesty International, which claims intercepted migrants could be at risk of torture.

A prosecutor in Trapani, Sicily, ordered the boat, named The Iuventa, should be put under a preventative seizure today.

Jugend Rettet, which carries out search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, tweeted the boat's crew was interviewed.

It said it had not received any information about being the target of an investigation.

A police statement said: 'Enquiries begun in October 2016, and conducted with the use of sophisticated techniques and investigative technology, have produced circumstantial evidence of the motorboat Iuventa being used for activities facilitating illegal immigration.'

The move came as Italian lawmakers voted to approve having Italian military vessels help Libya's coast guard stop migrant smuggling boats from leaving Libya for European shores.

Italy's defense minister insisted before Wednesday's vote in Parliament that the mission won't be a naval blockade, although lawmakers from the anti-migrant Northern League, an opposition party, demanded exactly that.

With several EU nations refusing to accept asylum-seekers to help ease Italy's burden, Italians' patience for the steady arrival of migrants rescued at sea appears to be wearing thin.

Hundreds of thousands of people, most of them economic migrants ineligible for asylum, have been brought ashore in Italy after rescue in the last few years.

The migrant crisis looms as a campaign issue in 2018 elections.

In response to Parliament's decision, Amnesty International's deputy Europe director, Gauri Van Gulik, said: 'The Italian authorities have shown today that they consider it more important to keep refugees and migrants away from their shores than to protect their lives and welfare.

'Facilitating the interception and return of refugees and migrants to Libya results in their arbitrary detention in centres where they are at almost certain risk of torture, rape and even of being killed, and today’s vote could make the Italian authorities complicit in these horrors.'

And he continued: 'This is not the answer to the humanitarian crisis in the central Mediterranean – it is a recipe for more suffering. Any cooperation with the Libyan authorities should prioritise monitoring and accountability for any human rights violations they have committed.'


Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4754148/Italy-seizes-German-operated-migrant-rescue-boat.html

NGO ship Iuventa confiscated

Order linked to probe into aiding illegal immigration

ANSA

2 August 2017

(ANSA) - Palermo, August 2 - Italian police and Coast Guard authorities on Wednesday executed an order by a Trapani judge for the preventative seizure of the Iuventa, a ship flying the Dutch flag operating for the German NGO Jugend Rettet, sources said. The order is related to a probe into alleged aiding of illegal immigration. Jugend Rettet is one of several NGOs conducting migrant rescues in the Mediterranean that refused to sign a new code of conduct at the Italian interior ministry this week.

The European Commission has said that NGOs that do not sign the code will not be guaranteed of access to Italian ports.

Earlier on Tuesday, Jugend Rettet said via Twitter that the vessel "has not been confiscated" after it was stopped and checked at the Italian island of Lampedusa.


Source:  http://www.ansa.it/english/news/politics/2017/08/02/ngo-ship-iuventa-confiscated-2_727082f9-b41d-4888-907f-c2dbfe9c1e2e.html

* "Migrants, seized NGO ship, the Prosecutor's Office: contacts with traffickers"/"Migranti, sequestrata nave Ong. La Procura: contatti con i trafficanti": http://tg24.sky.it/cronaca/2017/08/02/migranti-sequestro-nave-iuventa-ong-lampedusa.html

 

Italian authorities impound German NGO rescue vessel for 'facilitating illegal immigration'

VIDEO - Lampedusa, Italy 02.08.2017 – Italian Coast Guard boards the German NGO vessel "Iuventa": http://videofq.meride.tv/fq2/video/folder85/ANSA95126_mp4_fq2.mp4

[02.08.2017]

The "Iuventa" vessel of the German NGO "Jugend Rettet" which did not adhere to the code of conduct was intercepted off Lampedusa overnight and subsequently escorted by the Italian Coast Guard back to port for inspection.

Several coast guard cutters were deployed to escort the "Iuventa" and security was tight around the peer where the vessel docked. Initially the Lampedusa Port Authority Chief - Lieutenant Paolo Monaco who boarded and inspected the vessel for over two hours said: "It is only a routine procedure that needs to be conducted. We will now control documents of the entire crew and if everything is in order the vessel may leave Lampedusa".

On board the ship, during the inspection two Syrian citizens were found which were later escorted to a local refugee reception facility.

Later in the afternoon in an official statement of the Italian Police it was announced that the German NGO "Iuventa" vessel which regularly conducts rescues of migrants near the Libyan coast was impounded in connection with the investigation opened already in October and during which sufficient information was uncovered suggesting that the vessel was used "to aid and abet in clandestine immigration".

The district prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio who sought and obtained the court order to seize the boat said: "The seizure of the vessel was requested to prevent recurrence of the crime. There are three controversial episodes - he added - but there are other occurrences which will help to argue the case that this is a commonplace behavior".

This is not just a simple preventive measure. The vessel seizure is linked to a much larger investigation by the district prosecutor office in collaboration with the mobile team in Trapani and the Central Operational Service of the Anti-Crime Police Directorate. The Trapani prosecutors Ambrogio Cartosio and his deputy Andrea Tarondo are currently investigating all NGOs in the alleged collaboration with human traffickers.

* NOTE * The NGO “Jugend Rettet e.V.” was founded in 2015 in Germany with the objective of migrant rescue in the Mediterranean Sea. The ship “Iuventa” was bought two years ago in Emden, Germany and underwent a conversion from an old fishing cutter to a vessel adapted for NGO needs & purposes. The vessel is currently registered in Amsterdam under the Dutch flag.

German NGO official website: https://jugendrettet.org/en/  and Twitter: https://twitter.com/jugendrettet?lang=de

02.08.2017  Lampedusa - Police seizing the German NGO vessel "Iuventa"


Source:

* 02.08.2017 - La Stampa - "Intercepted crew conversations on-board the "Iuventa" / Le intercettazioni dell’equipaggio a bordo della Iuventa": http://www.lastampa.it/2017/08/02/multimedia/italia/cronache/le-intercettazioni-dellequipaggio-a-bordo-della-iuventa-K9t52R1PcFkyhYjOox6y0J/pagina.html
* 02.08.2017 - tg24.sky.it - "Migrants, NGO seized ship. The Prosecutor's Office: contacts with traffickers / Migranti, sequestrata nave Ong. La Procura: contatti con i trafficanti": http://tg24.sky.it/cronaca/2017/08/02/migranti-sequestro-nave-iuventa-ong-lampedusa.html
* 02.08.2017 - La Stampa - "NGO ship stopped and seized off Lampedusa. Investigation alleged collaborations with the traffickers / Nave di una Ong fermata e sequestrata al largo di Lampedusa. Si indaga su presunte collaborazioni con gli scafisti": http://www.lastampa.it/2017/08/02/italia/cronache/migranti-nave-ong-fermata-al-largo-di-lampedusa-etw7ZCW0tUxXQ8IAEX9k8I/pagina.html
* 02.08.2017 - La Repubblica - Migrants, Trapani prosecutor seizes ship: 'collaboration between German NGOs and traffickers' / Migranti, procura Trapani sequestra nave Iuventa: "Intese tra Ong tedesca e trafficanti": http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/08/02/news/migranti_codice_ong_in_vigore_fermata_nave_in_mare_per_controlli-172151820/
* 02.08.2017 - Times & Colonist - "Italy seizes German group's rescue boat in immigration probe": http://www.timescolonist.com/italy-seizes-german-group-s-rescue-boat-in-immigration-probe-1.21552009

Italian prosecutors widen investigation to include MSF over migrant rescues: source

Reuters

5 August 2017

MILAN (Reuters) - Italian prosecutors are investigating leading humanitarian organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a legal source said on Saturday, over its role in rescuing migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

Italian police on Wednesday seized a migrant rescue boat operated by German organization Jugend Rettet on suspicion of aiding illegal immigration.

A legal source now says that MSF is also part of the investigation over the alleged rescue of migrants carried out just off the Libyan coast when there was no immediate threat to their safety.

MSF said in a statement it had not been notified of the inquiry and that it stood ready to cooperate with prosecutors since similar accusations first surfaced in the press months ago.

"We hope any doubts can be dispelled soon to end this trickling of accusations that poisons the atmosphere in an ever gloomier situation," it said.

Italy is under pressure to manage new arrivals because some 600,000 migrants have reached it by sea from North Africa since 2014. Immigration has become a potent political issue ahead of elections in spring 2018.

In a press interview on Saturday, Luigi Di Maio, who is expected to lead the populist Five-Star movement in next year's vote, called for "an immediate stop to the sea-taxi service". The Five-Star is ahead of the ruling Democratic Party in polls.

Rome has asked eight NGOs to sign a code of conduct for the southern Mediterranean, including a demand that they carry an armed policemen on board their boats.

Only four aid groups have agreed to it.

Italy's Interior Minister Marco Minniti urged the four NGOs that have not signed the document to do so.

"Those who do not sign cannot remain part of Italy's rescue system, though nobody is questioning the law of the sea and international treaties," he said in an interview with Saturday's Il Fatto Quotidiano.

"Because migrants arrive in Italy, we must find a balance between their rights and those of the country that hosts them. We need complete trust between those who carry out the rescues and the country that opens up its ports," he said.

MSF said in the statement that it would respect most of the code's tenets, but could not sign it as it neglected humanitarian principles and elements which it considers essential for rescues to be effective.

Reporting by Valentina Za; Editing by Andrew Bolton


Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-idUSKBN1AL0R1?il=0