GENEVA: French medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Monday an MSF vessel that rescued hundreds of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean last month has been detained in Italy.
MSF suggested the seizure was politically motivated.
Thousands of migrants embark each year on the crossing, often departing in small, inflatable boats from Libya with hopes of reaching Europe.
So far this year, 866 migrant deaths have been recorded in the Mediterranean, according to the UN migration agency. Most of them, 723, died on the central Mediterranean route where the MSF vessel was operating.
MSF’s research ship, the “Geo Barents,” was seized on July 2 in Augusta, Sicily, during an inspection, the charity said in a statement.
While it is willing to comply with authorities’ requirements, MSF added that such inspections “represent an opportunity for authorities to pursue political objectives under the guise of administrative procedures.”
A UN report in May said that the EU and member states were partly to blame for migrant deaths due to various factors including obstruction of humanitarian rescue efforts.
The EU has not only cut back its own official search and rescue operations but governments have prevented humanitarian agencies from rescuing migrants in distress by impounding their vessels and targeting individuals with administrative and criminal proceedings, the report said.
Italian port authorities in Augusta declined to comment and the Transport and Infrastructure Ministry was not immediately available to comment.
The vessel had rescued more than 400 people including dozens of unaccompanied children from rubber and wooden and fiberglass boats in back-to-back operations during June, an MSF spokesman told Reuters.
MSF denounces seizure of migrant rescue vessel in Italy
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MSF denounces seizure of migrant rescue vessel in Italy
- Thousands of migrants embark each year on the crossing, often departing in small, inflatable boats from Libya with hopes of reaching Europe
- MSF's research ship "Geo Barents" was seized on July 2 in Sicily during an inspection
Venezuela parliament unanimously approves amnesty law
CARACAS: Venezuela’s National Assembly on Thursday unanimously approved a long-awaited amnesty law that could free hundreds of political prisoners jailed for being government detractors.
But the law excludes those who have been prosecuted or convicted of promoting military action against the country — which could include opposition leaders like Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who has been accused by the ruling party of calling for international intervention like the one that ousted former president Nicolas Maduro.
The bill now goes before interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who pushed for the legislation under pressure from Washington, after she rose to power following Maduro’s capture during a US military raid on January 3.
The law is meant to apply retroactively to 1999 — including the coup against previous leader Hugo Chavez, the 2002 oil strike, and the 2024 riots against Maduro’s disputed reelection — giving hope to families that loved ones will finally come home.
Some fear, however, the law could be used by the government to pardon its own and selectively deny freedom to real prisoners of conscience.
Article 9 of the bill lists those excluded from amnesty as “persons who are being prosecuted or may be convicted for promoting, instigating, soliciting, invoking, favoring, facilitating, financing or participating in armed actions or the use of force against the people, sovereignty, and territorial integrity” of Venezuela “by foreign states, corporations or individuals.”
Venezuela’s National Assembly had delayed several sittings meant to pass the amnesty bill.
“The scope of the law must be restricted to victims of human rights violations and expressly exclude those accused of serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity, including state, paramilitary and non-state actors,” UN human rights experts said in a statement from Geneva Thursday.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Venezuelans have been jailed in recent years over plots, real or imagined, to overthrow the government of Rodriguez’s predecessor and former boss Maduro, who was in the end toppled in the deadly US military raid.
Family members have reported torture, maltreatment and untreated health problems among the inmates.
The NGO Foro Penal says about 450 prisoners have been released since Maduro’s ouster, but more than 600 others remain behind bars.
Family members have been clamoring for their release for weeks, holding vigils outside prisons.
One small group, in the capital Caracas, staged a nearly weeklong hunger strike which ended Thursday.
“The National Assembly has the opportunity to show whether there truly is a genuine will for national reconciliation,” Foro Penal director Gonzalo Himiob wrote on X Thursday ahead of the vote.
On Wednesday, the chief of the US military command responsible for strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats off South America held talks in Caracas with Rodriguez and top ministers Vladimir Padrino and Diosdado Cabello .
All three were staunch Maduro backers who for years echoed his “anti-imperialist” rhetoric.
Rodriguez’s interim government has been governing with US President Donald Trump’s consent, provided she grants access to Venezuela’s vast oil resources.
