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Watching an EU-sanctioned breach of international human-rights law
Last month the crew on board the NGO rescue ship Sea Watch 3 saw Libyan Coastguard intercept migrants attempting to flee the country's humanitarian disaster. MINA NAGUIB, a volunteer doctor on board the ship, talks to Ben Cowles about the incident
Mina Naguib (centre) and his fellow volunteer doctor attend to a rescued refugee on board the Sea Watch 3

IN JANUARY, Mina Naguib and the crew on board the civil migrant-rescue ship Sea Watch 3 witnessed an EU-sanctioned breach of international human-rights law.

“On the morning of the 9th, early in the morning, we heard information of a boat in distress,” says Naguib, an emergency-medicine doctor based in Manchester who was volunteering as a medic with the German charity Sea Watch.

But by the time the Sea Watch 3 arrived at the co-ordinates, the so-called Libyan Coastguard was in the process of intercepting the boat and, presumably, returning the refugees on board to the humanitarian disaster they’d risked their lives to escape.

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