Resume migrant 'push-back' policy says ex-minister
Napolitano 'called for stopping boats' claims Maroni
03 October, 16:03
(ANSA) - Rome, October 3 - Former interior minister Roberto
Maroni said Italy should resume a controversial policy of
turning migrant boats back to Africa to avert disasters like
Thursday's wreck of a craft carrying 500 people off the
stepping-stone island of Lampedusa.The toll from the Somali and Eritrean asylum-seeker disaster was approaching 100 with around 150 survivors and 250 missing in the worst incident for years.
Maroni, leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League, said Italy's former 'push-back' policy to late dictator Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, criticised by human-rights groups, had been effective in stopping people smugglers. He said President Giorgio Napolitano's appeal for a crackdown on trafficking was a call for "guarding the coasts the illegals leave from".
"That's what I did when I was a minister: turn back the boats and save lives".
