{"id":31893,"date":"2020-05-02T12:30:50","date_gmt":"2020-05-02T12:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tabadul.demo.ly\/en\/prime-minister-abela-admits-coordinating-private-boats-that-returned-migrants-to-libya\/"},"modified":"2020-05-02T12:30:50","modified_gmt":"2020-05-02T12:30:50","slug":"prime-minister-abela-admits-coordinating-private-boats-that-returned-migrants-to-libya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tabadul.tv\/en\/prime-minister-abela-admits-coordinating-private-boats-that-returned-migrants-to-libya\/","title":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Abela admits coordinating private boats that returned migrants to Libya"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Prime Minister Robert Abela has admitted commissioning a boat that returned migrants to war-torn Libya on Easter weekend but has insisted it was a rescue mission and not a pushback.\u00a0\u00a0<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A boat commissioned by Maltese authorities picked up a group of migrants in the search and rescue area earlier this month and\u00a0returned them to the North African country.\u00a0<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is a crime under international law for states to return asylum seekers to a country where they are likely to face persecution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Speaking publicly about the controversy for the first time on Friday, Abela admitted the manoeuvre and defended the government&#8217;s actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> &#8220;There was a rescue of migrants. Had the Maltese government not coordinated, tens of lives would have died, because a [EU coastguard] Frontex plane just flew overhead and kept on going. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prime Minister Robert Abela has admitted commissioning a boat that returned migrants to war-torn Libya on Easter weekend but has insisted it was a rescue mission and not a pushback.\u00a0\u00a0 A boat commissioned by Maltese authorities picked up a group of migrants in the search and rescue area earlier this month and\u00a0returned them to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9271],"tags":[9877],"class_list":["post-31893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-libyamigrants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabadul.tv\/en\/qatiqul\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabadul.tv\/en\/qatiqul\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabadul.tv\/en\/qatiqul\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabadul.tv\/en\/qatiqul\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabadul.tv\/en\/qatiqul\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tabadul.tv\/en\/qatiqul\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabadul.tv\/en\/qatiqul\/wp\/v2\/media\/37029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tabadul.tv\/en\/qatiqul\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabadul.tv\/en\/qatiqul\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tabadul.tv\/en\/qatiqul\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}