An EU-funded Libyan so-called coastguard patrol boat opened fire on a rescue vessel in international waters, then attempted to force the vessel back to Libya. But instead of responding to their desperate requests for help, Italian authorities subsequently opened a criminal case against the rescue vessel’s captain after the ship docked in Italy.
“Nobody expects to rescue people and then get shot at…”
The vessel, Sea-Watch 5, had just pulled 90 people from a boat in distress that had left Libya earlier that morning. Without warning, an armed coastguard patrol boat fired a burst of around 10 to 15 rounds. Cultural mediator Yasmin Ibrahim Elzanaty was on deck when the shots rang out. She told Al Jazeera:
Nobody expects to rescue people and then get shot at. I could see the boat extremely close; it was too close,
As the only Arabic speaker on board, she negotiated with the attackers. She continued:
Even when we were talking, it wasn’t in a decent way, …There was no warning. The shots were fired first, and then we started talking.
The people they had rescued watched on in terror.
“They had just been pulled out of danger … We gave them hope that they were safe and then 30 minutes later, it was absolute chaos.”, Elzanaty recalls.
The system behind the violence
This is the third armed attack on an NGO rescue vessel in under a year. And it’s not happening in spite of EU policy—it’s a direct consequence of it.
Since 2015, the EU has channelled more than €400 million to Libya for migration management, while Italy donated the patrol boat that later opened fire under the same program. The escalating coastguard violence has become a consistent feature of the Central Mediterranean route, and the human cost of the EU-Libya pact continues to mount.
When the Libyan coastguard intercepts people at sea, it returns them to face detention exposing them to extortion through torture, forced labor, and trafficking networks. That is not an unintended consequence. It is the documented outcome of a policy built to keep people from reaching European shores. The EU continues funding these operations while migrants pay with their freedom, and no legal standard considers Libya a safe country to return.
By outsourcing border enforcement to Libyan militias, the EU also outsources accountability, creating a legal vacuum in which people vanish into detention systems directly linked to modern slavery. Sea-Watch spokesperson Julia Winkler unequivocally said:
Italy’s support for Libyan militias and the criminal investigation against our captain are two sides of the same coin.
Take action
The criminalisation of the Sea-Watch 5 captain is the latest in a pattern of legal harassment against rescue operators, while those who fire the guns face no consequences.
More than 34,000 people have died or gone missing crossing the Mediterranean since 2014. The EU’s answer is to keep funding the coastguard that turns survivors back.
Partnering with the Libyan coastguard is not migration management—it’s state-enabled exploitation. The EU must end its complicity in migrant abuse. Help us keep up the pressure on the EU to put human lives before inhume immigration policies. Add your name to our petition.
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