Salah al-Hiblu, the owner of a tanker that was temporarily hijacked by migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, says his brother, the tanker's captain, was asked to rescue the migrants by the Libyan coast guard.
Speaking Thursday from Tripoli, the Libyan capital, he said the tanker was coming in empty from Turkey and heading to Tripoli.
He received a call Wednesday from the Libyan coast guard asking him to contact his brother Nader to save migrants who were in trouble in the Mediterranean. He called his brother, who then rescued 100 migrants.
Al-Hiblu said the tanker kept heading to Tripoli when the migrants "used force" against his brother and told him either to go to Italy or Malta. He says "the migrants told him we are not leaving or going back to Libya. We already left Libya to go to Europe."
Italy and Malta refused at first to let the tanker dock in their ports. But a special operations team from Malta boarded the tanker on Thursday, took it back under control, and escorted it to Grand Harbour.
from The Malta Independent https://ift.tt/2UYYWO1
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