REFUGEE rescuers condemned the Italian government on Tuesday for preventing a non-governmental organisation’s (NGO) reconnaissance plane from carrying out its monitoring missions in the central Mediterranean.

German refugee rescue organisation Sea Watch announced in a video released this afternoon that, since Friday, the Italian authorities had prohibited its plane Moonbird from departing the island of Lampedusa.

“The Italian government and the European Union want to make sure that no-one knows the truth about what happens in the central Mediterranean,” Sea Watch legal adviser Giorgia Linardi said in the video.