Mild weather brings illegal migrants

The fine weather and calmer seas have brought back the influx of illegal immigrants to Malta's shores after the usual lull in the winter months.

Twenty-eight African migrants, all men, were landed at Haywharf from an Armed Forces of Malta patrol boat yesterday morning after their boat ran out of fuel off Malta on Tuesday.

This is not the first group of immigrants this year as a group of 24 immigrants - 20 males and four females - were brought ashore by the AFM last February.

The last known arrivals last year were four illegal immigrants who were arrested after the boat they were on ran aground at Ramla l-Ħamra in Gozo in December.

The AFM yesterday said that a fishing vessel informed its Operations Centre that a group of illegal immigrants on a 17-foot bluish boat was requesting fuel about 37 nautical miles southwest of Malta on Tuesday at about 2.10 p.m. An AFM Air Wing Islander aircraft was then dispatched to the area to investigate further.

The AFM said that, given the low visibility, the migrants' boat was initially not tracked by the aircraft and as visibility deteriorated the plane was called back to base. A Maritime Squadron Protector Class patrol boat, P-51, was by then in the area conducting its own search.

At 6.50 a.m. yesterday, Valletta Port Control was informed by a fishing vessel that the migrants' boat was located about a mile off Marsaxlokk and the Islander aircraft was scrambled and spotted the immigrants.

Patrol boat P-51 was subsequently dispatched to pick up the 28 migrants from their drifting boat.

The immigrants were landed at 10.30 a.m. at the Maritime Squadron's Hay Wharf base and handed over to the police immigration authorities, led by Inspector Sandro Zarb, and the Detention Services Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Gatt.

All the immigrants, who were packed close together in the stern of the patrol boat, appeared extremely tired and some even had difficulty to walk from the patrol boat to the waiting police bus. Most of them were barefoot and some wore just socks.

From Hay Wharf the immigrants, wearing bright orange lifejackets, were taken to the police quarters in Floriana where the routine procedures, including identification (in such cases documents are usually missing) and a medical examination, were carried out.

There have been almost 9,000 arrivals since March 2002, mostly from the African continent. About 3,000 of these are thought to be living in the Maltese community, mostly in open accommodation centres. Others have been repatriated or have simply "disappeared", probably somehow finding their own way to other countries.

There are just under 900 illegal immigrants at the detention centres at Lyster Barracks, Ħal Far, at Safi and Ta' Kandja. The detention centres are run by a special corps made up of AFM personnel, police officers and ex-services recruits. The corps falls under the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs.