The president of Médecins Sans Frontières today accused Italy, in an interview with AFP, of hindering the rescue of migrants in the Mediterranean by “criminalizing” non-governmental organizations and their floating ambulances.

The MSF ship, the Geo Barents, was docked in the southern Italian port of Salerno, having been placed in administrative detention two weeks ago by the Italian authorities.

The NGO appealed and the Salerno court annulled this measure today.

“The ship is free to return to the Mediterranean” for a new rescue mission, MSF spokesman Maurizio Debane told AFP.

In an interview with AFP from Salerno, MSF president Greek surgeon Christos Christou denied Italy’s accusations that the NGO allegedly failed to alert coordination authorities in advance during the multiple rescues that took place on August 23.

“I felt that I had to come here (in Salerno) to denounce the injustice of detaining the Geo Barents for 60 days, while so much is happening in the Mediterranean“, said Christou. As he pointed out, on August 23, when the ship had just carried out a rescue and was following the instructions of the Italian authorities to go to port, it spotted another boat with migrants in danger. “People were jumping into the sea. They were there, no help, no life jackets“, explained Christou.

“We tried to contact the Libyan Coast Guard again, but they did not respond. Looking at the people in the sea, at that moment, all we had to do was reach out to them and pull them out of the water“.

It was the third grounding of the Geo Barents under an Italian decree dating back to January 2023, which also blocked rescue vessels from other NGOs such as SOS Méditerranée, based in Marseille, and Sea-Eye and Sea -Watch for periods of up to 60 days. The detention of ships has often been overturned by Italian courts in the past, most recently in June.

Italy’s detention of NGO rescue ships is part of a “bundle of measures and instruments aimed at creating obstacles to what we are doing in the Mediterranean,” according to Christou.

“With this Italian government we can clearly see the intention: they really want to criminalize humanitarian aid provided by NGO ships,” he added.

Under Italian law, NGO ships are required to carry out only one rescue at a time, a provision that puts the lives of other migrants at risk, NGOs complain.

They are also forced to disembark migrants at remote ports, which increases the timescales and costs of returning to sea for other rescues.

Since 2017, Italy and the UN-backed Libyan government in Tripoli have been working together under a controversial EU-approved migrant deal.

The deal makes it possible, according to human rights NGOs, to send thousands of migrants back to Libya where they are being tortured and abused in detention centers.

Under this agreement, Italy provides training and funding to the Libyan coast guard in order to intercept migrant departures or facilitate the return to Libya of those already at sea.

The crossing from North Africa to Europe, in the central Mediterranean, is the deadliest migration route in the world.

At least 2,526 migrants died or went missing there last year and at least 1,116 since the start of the year, according to the International Organization for Migration, which has recorded more than 17,000 dead or missing since 2014.

The number of migrants crossing the central Mediterranean has fallen by almost a third this year, according to Frontex, the European border and coast guard agency.

However, migrants are choosing to take new dangerous routes, according to Christos Christou, who cited an increase this year in departures from Africa to Greece or the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, resulting in “more deaths”.

The European Union “fails to provide collective solutions”, the majority of the funds available for migration are spent on security measures rather than humanitarian measures, Christou said.

“No more drones, no more fences, no more coastguards… but to show humanity and treat our fellow human beings with dignity,” he declared.