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EU border charade puts immigrant lives in danger
Why did Frontex help an NGO ship rescue refugees in the Mediterranean, asks BEN COWLES
Photo of the incident supplied by Frontex [Frontex]

THOUGH the European border agency tells the Star it is NOT its policy to ignore charity ships, MSF humanitarian affairs adviser Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui finds a number of contradictions to this claim.

THE Osprey 3, a reconnaissance plane chartered by Frontex, the European Border and Coastguard Agency, alerted an NGO refugee rescue ship to a rubber boat in distress carrying 118 people in international waters off the coast of Libya on November 11.

Almost all of the activists involved in the NGO refugee rescue missions that I have spoken to this year and last have told me that Frontex’s planes do not alert them to refugee distress cases in the central Mediterranean.

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