The five Eritreans picked up by Italy on Thursday were in good health, had not been at sea for very long and refused to be rescued, the commander of the Armed Forces of Malta said yesterday.

Brigadier Carmel Vassallo said an AFM patrol boat gave the migrants crackers, water and life jackets the day before they reached Lampedusa and at no time was contact with them lost. The dinghy they were in was in good condition and the outboard motor was running.

His comments come in the wake of Italian media reports claiming that the Maltese gave the migrants fuel, started their dinghy's engine and abandoned them despite their poor state of health.

The migrants - two men, a woman and two teenagers - have claimed to be the only survivors of a group of 80 who had left Libya 20 days earlier and who slowly died off as a result of starvation and thirst after getting lost and running out of fuel. They also said they had been ignored by several vessels, except one that offered them bread and water five days before their rescue.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the migrants were in a terrible condition, emaciated and too weak to walk, when they arrived at Lampedusa on Thursday.

Sources said a doctor who visited the migrants yesterday recounted how the woman was still in a very bad condition but the other four seemed to be recovering.

However, Brig. Vassallo said the AFM had found the dinghy to be clean and it showed no indications of having been at sea for that long or of having carried such a large group of migrants.

He cast doubt on the migrants' entire story, claiming they were "fresh", "in good spirits" and "clean-shaven" and refused to be rescued by the Maltese armed forces because they wanted to reach Italy.

"At no stage throughout the journey, until they arrived in the territorial waters of Lampedusa, did we abandon them. We stayed there until we were certain the Italian Customs guards went for them.

"We give humanitarian assistance as necessary. I gave them what they needed," he said, although he did not say, when asked, whether or not fuel had been provided to them.

Last May, following a dispute between Malta and Italy over another boat of immigrants, the government had said it had the right to provide immigrants with assistance to continue on their way towards Italy.

"We had no right to bring these migrants to Malta. Our obligation is that if they are in distress we help them," the commander said. He defined distress as "being in imminent danger of dying" and at no stage were these five people in distress, he insisted.

"What I am saying is not that immigrants lie, but you cannot believe everything they say. When our soldiers were being told there were another 75 who had died at sea, they were seeing a clean dinghy, without any indication of having spent 20 days at sea.

"We are certain if there were 80 people they were not on the same dinghy, because it was not dirty. We find so much usually. The food they leave behind, the clothes, the smell... there was nothing of that," he said, although admitting the dinghy was a large one for five people.

The Brigadier also denied the rescued migrants were in a bad state of health. "One of them was walking almost normally on television yesterday. Even if you spend a day at sea your legs start to shake, let alone three or more days. But be sure he would not walk if he spent 20 days at sea."

He also dismissed Italian media reports that the Armed Forces of Malta was recovering corpses. The AFM said it sighted eight corpses in an advanced state of decomposition in the past two days in the Libyan search and rescue area.

"We are finding corpses in the sea but we do not think they were on the same dinghy," the Brigadier said.

Meanwhile, Agrigento Police Prefecture's Chief Umberto Postiglione has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

The chief officer said that if what the surviving immigrants were claiming was true, then there was a case of breach of human rights.

cperegin@timesofmalta.com