Policy blamed for humanity crimes
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More than 40,000 people have been intercepted in the Mediterranean and taken to detention camps and torture houses under a European migration policy that is responsible for crimes against humanity, according to a legal document asking the International Criminal Court to take the case yesterday.
The request filed with the ICC alleges that European Union officials are knowingly responsible for deaths of migrants at land and sea, and their widespread rape and torture at the hands of a Libyan coast guard funded and trained at the expense of European taxpayers. It names no EU official but cites an ICC investigation into the fate of migrants in Libya.
The legal document cites public EU documents, statements from the French president, the German chancellor and other top officials from the bloc.
鈥淲e leave it to the prosecutor, if he or she dares to go into the structures of power and to investigate at the heart of Brussels, Paris, Berlin and Rome and to see by searching in the archives of the meetings of the negotiations who was really behind the scenes trying to push for these policies that triggered the death of more than 14,000 people,鈥 said Juan Branco, who co-wrote the report.
The ICC is a court of last resort that handles cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide when other countries are unwilling or unable to prosecute.
The EU spokeswoman in charge of migration, Natasha Bertaud, declined to comment directly on the court filing but she and Germany鈥檚 government spokesman Steffen Seibert each placed blame for deaths at sea firmly on smugglers.
Rescue operation
鈥淭he EU鈥檚 track record on saving lives in the Mediterranean speaks for itself, saving lives has been our top priority and we working relentlessly to this end,鈥 Bertaud said.
The first crime was the decision to end the Mare Nostrum rescue operation near the end of 2014.
In one year, the operation rescued 150,810 migrants in the Mediterranean as hundreds of thousands crossed the sea.
Deaths in the Mediterranean then soared. In 2014, around 3,200 migrants died in the sea. The following year, it rose to over 4,000, and in 2016 peaked at over 5,100 deaths and disappearances, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration.
In the past two years migration has considerably to Europe. The total for the first four months of 2019 was around 24,200 for irregular migration, 27 percent lower than a year ago, according to Frontex, the EU鈥檚 border agency.
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