2023-12-11 11:21:51
On an August night lit by a quarter moon, a trawler weighs anchor and sets off from the coast, off the Akkar district, in the far north of Lebanon. This departure is a breath of hope for the hundred passengers on board, including many exiles from the Levant. Some are Syrian, others Lebanese. The crossing is supposed to take them to one of the southern coasts of Europe – Malta, Italy – using a long sea route that bypasses Greece for thousands of kilometers. “When we started the journey, I was optimistic. The sea was good and everything was fine,” remembers Bassel. The man prefers to use an assumed name as a security measure. Before leaving Lebanon mired in a political and economic crisis in order to join his brother living in Scandinavia, he had already fled his native Syria, devastated by war. “I didn’t expect to end up in Libya”he testifies on the phone.
Read also: In Libya, the rise of “kleptocracy” with “impunity”
On the eighth day of travel, while the trawler was off the coast of Malta, it was approached by an unidentified speedboat. This belongs neither to the Maltese authorities, nor to their Italian counterparts who regularly operate in the area, nor even to the armed groups united under the banner of the Libyan coast guard. “ We told them to leave us alone and that we had children and women on boardreports Bassel. But they accused us of having weapons and drugs and opened fire. » The old trawler then tries to flee, but does not have the means to lose the powerful launch. Its three engines allow the occupants of the Tareq-Bin-Zeyad to board the fishing vessel after a three-hour chase on the waters.
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Mediterranean
Gulf of Sirte
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from Taranto
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PAINTED
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Tripolitania
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Maltese SAR
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Greek SAR
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and Maltese
Italian SAR
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SAR
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Benghazi
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Principles of maritime law
Inland water limit
Territorial waters, 12 nautical mile limit (1 nautical mile = 1,852 m)
Maritime boundary delimited by a bilateral agreement
Theoretical maritime border, according to the principle of equidistance
Government of national unity, based in Tripoli
Libyan National Army of Marshal Khalifa Haftar
Limit of the search and rescue (SAR) zone of each State
Infographics : The world
Sources: D. Ortolland, J.-P. pirate, Geopolitical Atlas of the Oceans, Technip, 2017; JM Sobrino Heredia, “L’approche nationale en matière des zones maritimes en Méditerranée”, Yearbook of the Faculty of Law of the University of A Coruña, 2009; The world
Violation of international law
“Tareq Bin Zeyad”. Three words engraved on the blue hull of the speedboat which provide information on the identity of its sailors. This is the name of a large militia integrated into the Libyan National Army (LNA), led by Saddam Haftar, the son of Marshal Haftar, the strong man of the East. Since the spring, these armed men have regularly intercepted migrant boats off the coast of Libya and beyond, in the Maltese area, which therefore depends on the European Union (EU).
During months, The World Africa and its partners from the collaborative platform Lighthouse Reports, the Qatari television channel Al-Jazeera, the biweekly Malta Todayfrom the German daily The mirror and the collective of Syrian journalists SIRAJ investigated the ship of Tareq Bin Zeyad’s men and discovered that on several occasions the Maltese armed forces and the European border guard agency Frontex provided this militia with the GPS coordinates of boats seeking to reach Europe. Information which led to the interception of migrants and their forced sending to Libya where they are victims of mistreatment, in complete violation of international law.
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