Police Commissioner answers MPs' questions on migration

timesofmalta.com - Police Commissioner answers MPs' questions on migration

Thursday, 14th May 2009 - 10:10CET

Police Commissioner John Rizzo spoke about the police having to deal "with the unknown" when he answered questions by MPs during a meeting of the Parliamentary Select Committee.

He also replied to questions on the risks to security installations posed by the nearby siting of detention camps, and dealing with crime by migrants.

Asked whether detention centres could be sited in more secure locations, Mr Rizzo said that since Malta was small, there was no area where no threat was posed. It was always a concern to the authorities that should there be a riot, migrants could gain access to the airport, the army armoury or the police quartermaster store, he said.

There were currently 1,800 migrants in the detention centres. Earlier this year there were 2,400, which was 500 more than the whole police force. There were only 1,700 soldiers in the AFM. Therefore the risks were there, Mr Rizzo said. But he was very happy with the way the police, the AFM and the Detention Service had acted to contain any disturbance or riot, firmly but with the least force.

Turning to the identification of migrants, particularly rejected migrants who file appeals for protection, Mr Rizzo said the police were dealing with the unknown. These people arrived in the country without any ID papers. They could be coming from convents or prisons, he said.

He often asked himself why these people destroyed their identity papers when they claimed to be escaping from strife and needed to convince the authorities to protect them. What did they have to hide?

Mr Rizzo said that eight years after the migration problem started, the police with assistance particularly from Frontex, had amassed intelligence from various countries and had refined their interviewing techniques so as to be able to verify what the migrants said. Language expertise had also been increased, to the extent that Malta was now helping Frontex in this regard.

On the investigation of the people traffickers who actually brought the migrants to Malta, Mr Rizzo said such investigations were started as soon as any migrants’ boats arrived. When it was established that the migrants’ boats had a master, criminal action was taken. But in many cases, the migrants denied that there was anybody responsible for the boat and said they all acted together. They said they were given a compass and told to head North.

However in the larger boats, the police sometimes established the presence of a master or a navigator and took criminal action.

Asked which migrant groups caused most trouble, the Commissioner said trouble was caused by migrants of various nationalities, particularly Somalis, while some Nigerians were a cause of concern for reasons of drug trafficking.

As for the crime rate, Mr Rizzo said there was no denying that some crimes were caused by migrants, but he could not give percentages. Given that thousands of migrants had arrived in Malta, the numbers were not insignificant (mhux ħazin) Overall, however, the crime rate in Malta was actually down by an average of 12 percent per year for the past four years.

Replying to a question on what the police were doing with regard to migrants at Marsa, the Commissioner said this was a community of 1,000 people of different cultures and denominations, and incidents sometimes cropped up. The police, he said, lacked the resources to watch over every migrant to ensure that no one was employed illegally, and the focus therefore was on surprise inspections at places of work.

Such raids, the Commissioner stressed, were not against illegal immigrants, but against all people employed illegally. Indeed, the police often came across the illegal employment of foreign students.

NO REPATRIATION AGREEMENT WITH LIBYA

Home Affairs Minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici, who spoke at the same meeting, said the situation on the repatriation of migrants was in a state of flux. For example, last week Italy repatriated migrants picked up from five boats but in a more recent case, Italy had asked to bring the migrants to Malta and then took them to Sicily after Malta refused.

He confirmed that even if Italy had an agreement with Libya to repatriate the migrants, Malta did not. He had however been invited for talks in Libya along with the Italian Home Affairs Minister and the EU Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs.

Malta, he said, was calling for more resources to be placed in Libya by the EU and particularly the UNHCR, so that migrants who felt they should apply for protection, would do so there.

A recent reported development, he said, was that some migrant departures from Libya seemed to have shifted east, towards Benghazi, with the migrants heading for Crete.

The situation, he said, was very delicate. Malta would stick to its position of respecting its international obligations by coordinating the search and rescue zone and rescuing migrants who were in distress when the nearest port was in Malta.

“We are keeping our feet on the ground, holding firm to our views and obligations and trying to instil logic into the issue” Dr Mifsud Bonnici said, adding that he was also spending a lot of time explaining to the foreign media what the situation was.