Guardian: Libya Official Admits Migrant Ships Being Allowed to Sail as Protest Against Nato

From today’s Guardian:  “The Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is allowing thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants on to overcrowded, unseaworthy ships in an apparently calculated attempt to use migration as a weapon to pressure Nato and the EU countries backing Libya‘s rebels. [***] Officials said they were doing nothing to encourage the journeys to Italy, but could see no reason to stop them, because doing so would serve the interests of Nato member states bombing Libya.

‘We say to Europe that we can no longer do what we used to do,’ said the prime minister, al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi. ‘And that’s because Nato has ruined our coastal defences.’ [***] [S]urvivors told the [UNHCR] that some ships were leaving Tripoli only for their captain to disembark once they were at sea and take a pilot boat back to shore.  ‘They [the migrants] are told, “here’s the compass, you go that way”,’ [UNHCR spokesperson Melissa] Fleming said. [***]”

Click here for Guardian article.