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London:Tensions are rising in the southern Mediterranean's migrant crisis, after Italian coastguards seized a German aid group's boat suspected of aiding illegal immigration.

But refugee advocates have in return accused Italy of being complicit in human rights abuses, by sending navy vesselsinto Libyan waters to turn back migrant boats.

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Jugend Rettet, an aid group working in the Mediterranean say their equipment may have been hacked after being accused of allegedly helping people traffickers.

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Jugend Rettet, an aid group working in the Mediterranean say their equipment may have been hacked after being accused of allegedly helping people traffickers.

Refugee advocates deny accusations that non-government organisations have formed a "taxi service" for migrants fleeing Libya, saying instead they are providing a vital search-and-rescue service that is saving thousands of lives.

Italian coastguards confiscated the boat, named Iuventa and operated by activistcollective Jugend Rettet, on the island of Lampedusa after receiving evidence that its crew were in communication with people smugglers.

"The evidence is serious," Ambrogio Cartosio, chief prosecutor in the western Sicilian city of Trapani, said.

"We have evidence of encounters between traffickers, who escorted illegal immigrants to the Iuventa, and members of the boat's crew."

He said nobody had been charged but his investigation was continuing. He also said it would be a "fantasy" to say there was a coordinated plan between the NGOs and the Libyan traffickers.

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Jugend Rettet did not respond to a request for an interview from Fairfax Media.

On Twitter on Thursday they said their crew were interviewed by officials "as part of the standard procedure" and they had received no information about an investigation.

"Our legal teams are working hard to examine the legal basis of the confiscation of the ship," they said.

They watched their ship's forced departure from Lampedusa "with heavy hearts" because the ship was "dearly needed", they said.

Last month, Italy, with the backing of the European Union, imposed a code of conduct for NGOs in the Mediterranean.

Jugend Rettet said they had been negotiating with Rome over the code, but on Tuesday had decided not to sign it until it was rewritten.

"Our top priority is to save people in distress but this is not prioritised [in] this code of conduct [which] would legally put us in an uncertain position," they said in a statement on Facebook.

In May,Cartosio told a parliamentary committee in Rome that he had become suspicious of NGOs after noticing some rescue crews seemed to know in advance where to find migrant boats, and were making rescues without informing the Italian coastguard.

Carmelo Zuccaro the chief prosecutor of the Sicilian port of Catania, has claimed he had evidence of phone calls between people smugglers and aid groups, but in May admitted he was expressing only a "hypothesis" and had no proof that could be used in court.

A fleet of around a dozen boats crewed by humanitarian groups are working on the Mediterranean to perform rescues.

Around 85,000 migrants arrived in Italy by boat in the first six months of 2017, 21 per cent more than in the same period in 2016.

More than 2200 people have died attempting the crossing this year, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Last year, rescues in the Mediterranean were closer to Italy, but now they were happening much closer to the border between Libyan and international waters, prompting accusations the NGOs are encouraging people smugglers.

Smugglers were "including the presence of NGO boats in their business model", aEuropean official familiar with the situation told Fairfax Media last month.

Izza Leghtas, a senior advocate for Refugees International, said search and rescue should not be made into a political issue.

NGOs performed more than a third of the rescues in the area in the first part of 2017, Leghtas said.

"They are filling a huge gap if they weren't doing that work then we would be talking probably about thousands more people drowning."

"They are proactive, they go to the areas where they know people are at risk in international waters," she said, while official boats were more focused on border control. "We are talking about life and death situations and that needs to be the priority."

Part of the problem was the pressure Italy was coming under because other European countries, including Italy's closest neighbours, had not stepped up to take a share of the migrants and refugees arriving from Africa.

The Italians had been traumatised by the number of deaths at sea and felt they had been left alone to handle it, Leghtas said.

She rejected the claim that NGOs were encouraging migrants to take to the sea.

"The conditions in Libya are so horrific, it's a question of a push factor not a pull factor," she said. "People get out of Libya because it's unbearable, because people are killed and tortured and sexually abused.

"To focus on the rescue operations and ignore the fact they are fleeing for their lives [is wrong] people are going to go regardless [of the NGO boats]."

She said her group was deeply concerned by the Italian government's plan to send its vessels into Libyan territorial waters to help the Libyan coastguard intercept migrant and refugee boats.

"It is no secret that migrants and refugees who are intercepted and returned by the Libyan coast guard face horrific abuses in Libya's migrant detention centers," said Leghtas. "By engaging in these operations, the Italian government would be knowingly complicit in these abuses."

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Migrant crisis: German NGO boat that 'contacted people ...

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Tommaso Fabbri, believes organisations like his are being left to fill the void left by Europe.

A new code of conduct was created to address the migrant crisis and lays down 13 rules Rome insists must be followed to prevent aid groups rescuing migrants from acting as a magnet for human traffickers.

Mr Fabbri said: The Code of Conduct that the Italian Ministry of Interior asked us to sign seems to be entrenching the view that states can outsource the life-saving response to NGOs, allowing states to concentrate their efforts on naval and military operations.

The responsibility to organise and conduct search and rescue operations at sea lies as it always has with states. As such, our current rescue activities are simply filling the void left by Europe.

The Italian government has considered trying to contain migrants and refugees in Libya through military operations.

Mr Fabbri added: Libya is not a place where people should be returned to, be it from European territory or from the sea.

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Austrian riot police line up to face protesters (not pictured) during a rally against the Austrian government's planned re-introduction of border controls at the Brenner Pass, Austria

We do not believe that search and rescue should be the solution to address boat migration and mortality at sea, but it is needed in the absence of any other safe alternative for people to seek safety.

Cutting the only and last escape they have from exploitation and violence cannot be an acceptable solution.

Italian ministers believe they have been left alone to deal with the rising number of migrants arriving on their shores.

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Former prime minister Matteo Renzi recently declared: I cannot accept the idea that Europe is just the single market.

If there are some European countries that make great speeches and that we help by giving them a lot of money, and then these countries, when it comes to helping out on immigration, close their doors after being helped by us I would stop giving them money.

"This is not being against Europe. This is defending European ideals."

UN figures estimate more than 94,000 people have arrived this year alone, with more than 2,300 dying while trying to attempt the perilous crossing, mainly from Africa.

Privately-funded aid boats reportedly performed 26 percent of the rescues carried out in 2016, rising to 35 percent so far this year.

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Migrant crisis reaches boiling point as NGO head Tommaso Fabbri ... - Express.co.uk

August 7 2017, 12:01am,The Times

Clare Foges

Western nations must crack down on sea crossings and reform the UNs Refugee Convention

The competition among United Nations officials to make the most irritating comment about the UK continues. There was the UN human rights expert who said sexism was more pervasive here than in any other country she had visited. Then the UN special representative for international migration described British plans to build a wall around the port of Calais as inhumane. Now we have Volker Trk, of the UN high commissioner for refugees, vying hard for first prize.

Last week Mr Trk said the UK needs to step up and help to address the migrant crisis. Never mind that we have committed hundreds of millions to help refugees in the camps around Syria, or that in 2016 we resettled more refugees than any other country in

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Time for a harder line on the migrant crisis - The Times

According to Nicola Latorre, an Italian senator and ally of the minister, Mr. Minniti was the protagonist of the breakthrough last week, when Prime Minister Fayez Serraj of Libya requested the support of Italian naval ships to counter human trafficking.

It is a risky endeavor that Italy has nevertheless sought for years, desperate to cut the migrant flow. Its success or failure now falls to Mr. Minniti, who polls show to be a popular member of a government with uncertain chances in the next election.

Some political observers have even suggested that Mr. Minniti, with his leftist background and ability to please conservatives with tough talk on security, might be a good candidate for prime minister. He has served in five center-left Italian governments, though he emphasized that he had never asked for a position. Ive always been chosen, he said.

Minniti could be a card to play, said Marco Damilano, a prominent Italian journalist who has written often about him.

Mr. Minniti dismissed such talk. He said he was instead more focused on countering Islamic radicalism by making pacts with local imams that required them to preach in Italian, building new relationships in Africa and working with the Libyans to defeat human traffickers.

Human relationships count a lot, said the old spy master.

The number of migrants who have landed in Italy this year totals more than 95,000, with about 2,000 who drowned. It is a crisis that has defied nearly every attempt to solve it.

Despite a mix of appeals and threats by Mr. Minniti at European Union meetings, neighboring countries have done little to share Italys crushing burden.

In particular, tensions have risen with President Emmanuel Macron of France, who has resisted accepting migrants and started an uncertain peace process in Libya that, critics here say, blindsided Italy and weakened its chances of stopping traffickers by legitimizing a rival of Mr. Serraj.

Mr. Minniti said that he agreed in principle with Mr. Macron on trying to reach a peace in Libya, but that a target of 2018 would be too late for him. I cannot wait, he said.

He argued that smashing human trafficking networks and investing in Libyan mayors were the best ways to stabilize a porous southern Libyan border that allows migrants from traditionally Francophone African countries to pass.

As Mr. Minniti fidgeted with a silver Casio watch, representatives of humanitarian organizations met in the ministry with officials to try to agree on a new code of conduct for rescuing migrants near Libyan waters.

More than 40 percent of migrants at sea are now rescued by private aid ships, and Mr. Minniti wants to make sure those ships are not colluding with traffickers an accusation popular among right-wing politicians, white nationalist groups and a Sicilian prosecutor.

He also insists that it is only appropriate that the Italian police be able to board those ships, which they did on Wednesday.

My duty is to be close to those who are afraid, to reassure them, to liberate them from fear, Mr. Minniti said, arguing that the left can no longer afford to ignore or look down on people scared by immigration or terrorism.

I think fear is the crucial element of the next 10 years in democracy, he said. In Italy and all the world.

That law-and-order talk has been too much for some of Mr. Minnitis old comrades on the left. (One left-leaning newspaper suggested that Mr. Minniti thought he was Batman.) But the intense and abstemious minister said service to the state was in his blood.

His father was one of nine brothers to make a career in the military. In high school in Reggio Calabria, he developed a love of the ancient poet Catullus.

But his true passion was for the skies. He hoped to follow his familys tradition by becoming an air force pilot. Instead, his mother put her foot down, saying the family had already given enough.

Mr. Minniti said he took the ban badly. (The shelves of his office still display the models of the jets he once hoped to fly.)

In an act of rebellion, he studied philosophy at the University of Messina. He wrote his thesis on the Georgics of Virgil, and to help understand the exploitation of slaves in the ancient Roman fields, he said I used Marx.

Those studies helped bring him closer to the Communist Party, and when he graduated, he said, his father showed how proud he was of his communist philosopher son when he didnt show up.

But that opposition only fueled Mr. Minnitis conviction as he sought to stand up for the countrys democratic values in dangerous sections of Calabria ruled by one of Italys feared mafias, the Ndrangheta (pronounced n-DRAHN-ghe-ta).

In 1980, Mr. Minniti, a free-diving enthusiast, was trying on a swimsuit when he received word that a friend in the Communist Party had been gunned down by the mob. It fell on him to tell his comrades parents.

In the 1980s, he began working closely with the Communist Partys rising star, Massimo DAlema. In the early 1990s, Mr. Minniti by then married to a musician, Mariangela, with whom he has two daughters moved with Mr. DAlema to form a new political party.

When Mr. DAlema became prime minister in 1998, he brought Mr. Minniti in as his right-hand man. The young aide worked at a desk once used by Benito Mussolini, and less than a month into his tenure answered a secure phone in his bedroom.

I was convinced it would never ring, he said.

The Italian authorities had stopped Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, who was considered a terrorist by many, as he entered Italy. Mr. Minniti ordered his arrest, setting off on a crash course in international intelligence operations and spy craft.

The experience followed almost immediately by his crucial role in the Italian intervention in Kosovo gave him a taste for security work.

In 1999, he made his first visit to Libya, a former Italian colony, and began to learn about its disparate centers of power. Today he rattles off the names of Libyan towns where traffickers loom, places that he says he knows better than his native Calabria.

But whether that deep experience can resolve Italys endless migrant crisis remains a long shot. Already, like with an earlier agreement with the Libyans that Mr. Minniti helped broker, not all has gone according to plan.

Early in the planning, a competing Libyan leader, Gen. Khalifa Hifter whom Mr. Macron has included in peace talks has threatened to bomb the Italian navys ships. The Italian ambassador in Tripoli responded that such threats were useless and that the Italian mission would go ahead.

Mr. Minnitis ministry eager to show its strategy is working has latched on to a dip in the number of migrants arriving in Italy compared with last year.

The minister himself knows skepticism is high and said that when he first broached dealing with Libya, which lacked an empowered interlocutor with whom to negotiate, critics laughed in my face.

They said, You dont understand the most basic thing: Libya is instable.

What he does understand, he said, is that such instability means anything can happen at any time and that any deal could blow up. But we have built a path.

A version of this article appears in print on August 5, 2017, on Page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Italys Lord of the Spies Takes On a Migration Crisis.

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Italy's 'Lord of the Spies' Takes On a Migration Crisis - New York Times

Italy is grappling with an influx, with UN figures revealing more than 94,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean into the nation so far this year.

And more than 2,300 have died while trying to attempt the perilous crossing.

At its shortest distance, the EU country is a mere 290 miles from the coast of Libya, a largely lawless country which has seen the number of people smugglers rocket.

Given the short distance to the EU from the North African coast, Italy is dealing with a higher number of migrants on their shores when compared to other countries on the continent, particularly northern Europe.

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Refugees and migrants wait in a small rubber boat to be rescued off Lampedusa, Italy

Rome has pleaded with Brussels and its neighbours for help in dealing with the influx, with many politicians voicing their frustration over what they see as being abandoned to deal with the issue themselves.

President of political party Fratelli dItalia, or Brothers of Italy, lamented the situation in the country.

Giorgia Meloni said: Italy is now the refugee camp of Europe."

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Fellow politician Alessandro Di Battista, from the M5S party, took a swipe at Paris over the situation.

He said: "France gets the oil while Italy keeps the boats.

His comments are indicative over infighting among EU countries, with Italy viewing France as having its claws in Libyas lucrative oil trade.

Italy is now the refugee camp of Europe

Giorgia Meloni

Once producing some 1.6 million barrels a day of the black gold, production plummeted after dictator Muammar Gaddafi was toppled by an international coalition in 2011.

During the action to topple Gaddafi, Paris led the NATO airstrikes with the French Air Force flying a third of NATO sorties.

Despite a shaky recovery, production has recovered to 1.4 million barrels a day, and makes up 80 per cent of Libyas GDP.

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Libya has become fractured and unstable, but oil production remains its key export and props up its fragile economy.

But Italy bitterly views France as profiteering off the oil, while it gets saddled with the migrants who come over in their thousands.

Last year French company Technip has signed a $500million (380n) deal to refurbish an oil platform off the coast off Libya, which includes Libya's National Oil Company.

Despite Italian firm ENI part of the consortium, France is seen at the forefront of the project, with Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault saying at the time: The project demonstrates the desire of French companies to contribute to the petroleum sector, the backbone of the Libyan economy.

The boost was widely seen as French attempts to prop up the economy, giving it a much needed boost.

But the current situation in the Mediterranean has led the desperate Italian government to toy with the idea of issuing 200,000 temporary migrant visas for onwards travel within Europe, in a bid to force other countries to take on more responsibility.

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And the latest measure to tackle the rising numbers has seen a fleet of Italian ships in a de facto battle with Libyan vessels in the Mediterranean Sea, after the Italian government ordered the Navy to try to stop ships making the journey across the water.

In response General Kalifa Haftar, who controls most of the east of Libya, ordered Libyan forces to bomb any Italian ships part of the mission.

The Libyan National Army said in a statement: Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, issues orders to the Libyan naval bases in Tobruk, Benghazi, Ras Lanuf and Tripoli to confront any marine unit that enters the Libyan waters without the permission of the army.

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'France gets the oil & Italy keeps the boats!' Italian MPs blast Paris over migrant crisis - Express.co.uk