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France cancels speedboats delivery to Libyan coastguard

The French government has finally announced it will not supply the Libyan coastguard with six speedboats destined to be used against clandestine crossings to Europe after several NGOs mounted a legal challenge to the sale, arguing that France was contributing to human rights violations in Libya where captured migrants face notorious internment camps, torture and being used as slave labour.

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France has reversed a controversial decision to supply the Libyan coastguard with six speedboats as rescue ships after pressure from numerous NGOs, reports The National.

When the six-boat deal was announced in February, rights groups said France could be complicit in crimes committed against migrants.

Migrants stopped by the Libyan coastguard in the Mediterranean Sea are brought back to overcrowded detention centres to sometimes face abuse, militia conscription and torture.

Some Libyan coastguard officials, who typically run with almost no government oversight, have been sanctioned by the UN for their role in human trafficking.

Libya has become a transit country for hundreds of thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe.

A French government source told AFP that “the situation in Libya does not permit the offer of these boats”.

The European Council on Refugees and Exiles, an alliance of over 100 NGOs, described France’s move as a “victory for the people returned” to Libya by the coastguard on “a daily basis”.

“Any support to Libyan search and rescue efforts should be conditional on an end to the automatic and arbitrary detention of people in Libya after they have been rescued/intercepted at sea by the Libya Coast Guard,” tweeted Charlie Yaxley, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency.

Read more of this report from The National.