Libyan Coast Guard

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Libyan Coast Guard

Lineup 1970
Country LibyaLibya Libya
Armed forces Libyan armed forces
Armed forces Libyan Navy
Type Armed forces (coast guard)
Strength around 1000 (by 2011)
management
Current
commander 		Commodore Abdalh Toumia

The Libyan Coast Guard ( Arabic جهاز حرس السواحل وامن المواني Jihāz Ḥirs as-Sawāḥil wa Amn al-Mawānī  'Organization for Coast Guard and Port Security') is part of the Libyan Navy . It is unclear which de facto -Machthaber subject to the units.

history

In 1970, the previously separate Libyan customs and port police were merged with the Libyan Navy under the command of the Ministry of Defense. Her area of ​​responsibility expanded to include the fight against smuggling and the enforcement of customs laws. To carry out these tasks, the Coast Guard was set up as a division under the High Command of the Libyan Navy.

Libya's coast guard then ordered ten 32-meter patrol boats of the type PV30-LS in Croatia . In May 2006, the Adria-Mar shipyard delivered the first two boats with a displacement of 130 tons to the Libyan coast guard. Other boats with a lower displacement of 116 tons followed.

Muammar al-Gaddafi and the then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signed the Italian-Libyan friendship treaty in 2008 . a. intended to deliver Italian patrol boats to the Libyan Coast Guard. The then Interior Minister Roberto Maroni handed over four boats to Tripoli. The boats were damaged during the 2011 fighting and have been in Italy for repairs since 2012. Marco Minniti promised that the boats would be returned to the Az-Sarradsch government, recognized by Italy and the EU.

Masoud Abdel Samad is the head of the Coast Guard's International Cooperation Center. According to media reports, Commodore Abdalh Toumia is the head of the coast guard. The strength of the coast guard was given up to the civil war with around 1000 men. After the civil war in 2011 and the ongoing second civil war from 2014 onwards , Fayiz al-Sarradsch (Tripolitania) and Khalifa Haftar lay claim to preside over the legitimate government of Libya.

Support from Europe

In May 2013, the EU Libya decided through the European Union Border Assistance Mission in Libya (EUBAM Libya) to build capacities for increased security and security at short notice. a. to support the sea borders.

In June 2016, the EU expanded the mandate for the naval operation EU NAVFOR Med to include training for the Libyan coastguard and navy to combat smugglers, stop human trafficking in Libya and carry out search and rescue (sea rescue). According to lawyer Daniel Gehzelbash, the Libyan coast guard has repeatedly intercepted refugees in Libyan and international waters and brought the migrants back to Libya. He sees it as an outsourcing of border controls and rejection actions to Libyan authorities that operate outside the European Convention on Human Rights .

The European Union wants to use the Libyan Coast Guard today as an effective tool against migration to the EU. In February 2017, Libya promised through the UN-recognized government in Tripoli to stop migration to Europe from Libya's coast. In summer 2017, the EU Commission decided to transfer 46 million euros to strengthen the Libyan coast guard and protect the country's southern border.

At the request of the internationally recognized Libyan Prime Minister Fayiz al-Sarradsch and to provide technical and logistical support to the Libyan Coast Guard, Italy sent two ships. The EU wants to train 300–500 Libyans for the coast guard. According to the EU foreign affairs officer, Federica Mogherini, these are to be subjected to control mechanisms. The armed forces of Malta were already training members of the Libyan coast guard in 2017.

At the EU-Africa summit at the end of 2017, a task force consisting of representatives from the EU, the African Union and the United Nations was set up to deal with the humanitarian situation of refugees and migrants. a. in Libya should improve:

  • Access for international aid organizations to camps under the Libyan unity government.
  • Expansion of voluntary return. The African Union agreed to organize non-bureaucratic returns from Libya.
  • Improved information exchange and awareness campaigns.
  • Exchange of legal migration to Europe
  • Support stabilization efforts. The EU and its member states agreed on the European External Investment Plan, which aims to support and encourage private investment in Africa. With a fund volume of 3.35 billion euros, investments of up to 44 billion euros are to be mobilized. By strengthening the African economy, African young people should be motivated to stay in their home countries.

The repatriation should take place as follows:

The UN refugee agency is initially supposed to identify politically persecuted people and migrant workers. Politically persecuted persons should first be brought to safety in the neighboring countries Niger and Chad and then distributed to countries willing to accept them. Migrant workers should return to their countries of origin under the responsibility of the African Union and with the support of the International Organization for Migration , with the EU providing funds for reintegration assistance.

Legal migration channels for work and training in EU countries were also agreed.

By April 2018, 20,000 migrants had been returned to their home countries with EU funds. 137 human traffickers were arrested and handed over to the Italian judiciary. Libyan authorities have now closed 20 of the 53 internment camps. EU countries will take in 50,000 migrants by 2019 as part of the resettlement program, Germany has agreed to take over 10,000 migrants.

reception

From the start of support from Italy and the EU (February 2017) until the beginning of July 2017, the Libyan coast guard has already rescued 10,000 people from distress at sea.

There are allegations against Coast Guard personnel that they confiscated boats and their outboard motors for sale to tugboats. There are also reports of collaborations between the coast guard and gangs of smugglers in some sections of the coast.

The Libyan coast guard is considered notoriously corrupt and controlled by regionally different civil war parties, some of which work with people smugglers. Abd Al Rahman al-Milad, who heads the Coast Guard in the Zawiya section , was placed on the UN sanctions list in June 2018 . He is accused of smuggling people himself and of collaborating with other people smugglers and of sinking a refugee boat with firearms.

Der Spiegel reported in 2017 that the Libyan Coast Guard hadharassedthe German frigate Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (F 218) 50 kilometers off the coast of the country on November 1, 2017. The frigate wasen routeas part of the EU Operation Sophia and wanted to investigate a smuggler boat. According to the report, a Coast Guard boat was approaching at high speed, and the frigate then navigated between the smuggler boat and the Coast Guard. The coast guard's patrol boat is said to have turned off and fired several times into the water. According to Spiegel , thefrigate captain complained tothe coast guard, whereupon their commodore Abdalh Toumia officially apologized and spoke of an oversight.

In March 2019, Buzzfeed News reported that the Libyan Sea Rescue Center of the Coast Guard was very often inaccessible in emergencies and that, contrary to the Sea Rescue Convention of 1979, there was no English-speaking staff available at all times and emergency calls were simply interrupted.

Lawsuit against Italy

In 2016, Human Rights Watch said that by training the Libyan Coast Guard, the EU would try to circumvent the non-refoulement principle by outsourcing dirty work to Libya and that it would violate the individual's right to unhindered travel.

Several cases have been documented in which the Libyan coastguard used dangerous maneuvers to endanger refugees and representatives of rescue organizations. In July 2017, the International Criminal Court in The Hague announced that it had opened investigations against the Libyan Coast Guard into alleged attacks on sea rescue NGOs.

UNHCR leader Seid al-Hussein described the European policy of supporting the Libyan coast guard to intercept migrants and bring them back to Libya in November 2017 as inhuman.

In May 2018, migrants rescued from distress outside Libyan territorial waters by the Libyan coast guard, supported by NGOs, filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights . The plaintiffs accuse Italy of having violated their human rights by exercising the effective control of sea rescue operations by the Libyan coast guard through the MRCC in Rome and Italian warships in Tripoli and therefore jointly responsible if the rescued were subsequently mistreated in Libyan internment camps. Of the 17 plaintiffs, 2 were rescued by the Libyan coast guard and brought back to Libya. They were tortured there. After they agreed to return to their home country, Nigeria, they were brought back there. No comments have yet been made on the complaint from Italy. Italian officials generally defended the cooperation with the Libyan coast guard, saying that it has saved many people and has also reduced the number of migrants who entrust their lives to Libyan smugglers and unseaworthy inflatable boats. The Council of Europe's Human Rights Representative Dunja Mijatović , as an independent procedural observer, pointed out to the European Court of Human Rights that human rights violations in Libya are well documented and that European states, in their cooperation with the Libyan coast guard, must ensure that human rights are observed.

Legal sources

literature

Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c John Pike: Coast Guard . ( globalsecurity.org [accessed March 24, 2018]).
  2. ↑ Globaldizajn www.globaldizajn.hr: Patrol Vessel (Low Silhouette) Type PV30-LS - Agencija Alan. Retrieved March 24, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b c stucco in Libya. Migrants and (Our) Political Responsibilities | ISPI. Retrieved March 24, 2018 .
  4. ^ Civil war in North Africa: Libyan rivals conclude a ceasefire . In: Spiegel Online . July 25, 2017 ( spiegel.de [accessed March 21, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Decision 2013/233 / CFSP of the Council of May 22, 2013 on the European Union Mission in Support of Integrated Border Management in Libya (EUBAM Libya) , accessed on June 5, 2018
  6. ↑ European Commission, Rescue at Sea in the Mediterranean: EU begins training Libyan coast guard and finances new ships for Italy , October 27, 2016
  7. ↑ Daniel Gehzelbash: Refuge Lost: Asylum Law in on Interdependent World . Cambridge University Press 2018, ISBN 978-1-108-44141-4 , p. 171
  8. ^ A b Libyan Coast Guard Faces Allegations of Corruption . In: The Maritime Executive . ( maritime-executive.com [accessed March 21, 2018]).
  9. ^ A b STANDARD Verlagsgesellschaft mbH: Refugees: The Warlord behind the Libyan Coast Guard . In: derStandard.at . ( derstandard.at [accessed on March 21, 2018]).
  10. ↑ Commander in Operation Sofia says up to 500 new Libyan recruits to receive training | The Libya Observer. Retrieved March 21, 2018 .
  11. ^ Allied Newspapers Ltd: AFM soldiers train Libyan coast guard officers . In: Times of Malta . ( timesofmalta.com [accessed March 21, 2018]).
  12. ↑ Bundesregierung.de, Combat illegal migration together
  13. ↑ FAZ, Europeans want to fly migrants from Libya , November 30, 2017
  14. ↑ FAZ, Europeans want to fly migrants from Libya , November 30, 2017
  15. ^ Sächsische Zeitung, Escape from Libyan Hell , April 20, 2018
  16. ↑ Die Welt, Thomas de Maizière , Marco Minniti , The migration crisis is coped with in Africa , July 12, 2017
  17. ↑ Tom Kington: EU navies find training Libyan coast guard no easy task . DefenseNews March 20, 2017, accessed June 10, 2018
  18. ^ UN Blacklists Libyan Coast Guard Leader for Migrant Smuggling . Maritime Executive June 8, 2018, accessed June 10, 2018
  19. ↑ Libyan coast guard is said to have threatened German frigate . In: sueddeutsche.de . November 26, 2017, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on March 21, 2018]).
  20. ↑ Marcus Engert: Refugee Ships Are Trying To Call Them During Emergencies - But They Aren't Answering . BuzzFeeds.News, March 27, 2019, accessed June 18, 2019.
  21. ^ Marianne Riddervold: The Maritime Turn in EU Foreign and Security Policies: Aims, Actors and Mechanisms of Integration . Palgrave 2018, ISBN 978-3-319-66597-9 , pp. 70 f.
  22. ↑ Marcus Engler: Libya - a difficult partner in European migration policy . Federal Agency for Civic Education, accessed May 18, 2018
  23. ^ Abdulkadder Assad: ICC probes Libyan Coast Guard over alleged attack on rescue NGOs . Libya Observer July 6, 2017, accessed June 11, 2018
  24. ↑ EU's policy of helping Libya intercept migrants is 'inhuman', says UN . Guardian November 14, 2017, accessed June 9, 2018
  25. ↑ Libya's detention of migrants 'is an outrage to humanity,' says UN human rights chief Zeid . UN News November 14, 2017, accessed June 9, 2018
  26. ↑ Nicole Winfield: Migrants accuse Italy of responsibility for Libyan abuses . AP News May 8, 2018, accessed June 4, 2018
  27. ↑ Stefanie Kirchgaessner, Lorenzo Tondo: Italy's deal with Libya to 'pull back' migrants faces legal challenge . Guardian May 8, 2018, accessed June 7, 2018
  28. ↑ Human rights expert reprimands cooperation with Libya in sea rescue . Standard November 22, 2019, accessed February 27, 2020.