THE European Union is complicit in “crimes against humanity” because of its support for the Libyan coastguard, a migrant rescue charity said today following the killing of a Sudanese man whose escape from Libya was intercepted by the EU-funded operation.

Doctors from the intergovernmental group International Organisation for Migration (IOM) witnessed the tragedy on Thursday after the coastguard disembarked 103 migrants in Tripoli.  

In a statement condemning the killing today, the IOM said the shooting occurred as the migrants resisted being sent back to detention centres.

“IOM staff who were on the scene to provide aid to migrants report that armed men began shooting in the air when several migrants tried to run away from their guards,” the statement read.  

“The [man] was struck by a bullet in the stomach. Despite immediately receiving medical aid on the spot by an IOM doctor and then being transferred to a nearby clinic, he died two hours after admission.

“The death is a stark reminder of the grim conditions faced by migrants picked up by the coastguard after paying smugglers to take them to Europe, only to find themselves put into detention centres, whose conditions have been condemned by IOM and the UN.”

Sea Watch, a German migrant rescue charity whose captain Carola Rackete defied Italy’s ban on NGO ships in June, lambasted the EU both for cancelling its search and rescue ships and for its persecution of the civil rescue fleet.

“If the EU itself does not send any ships, it must at least ensure that volunteers can step in and do their work undisturbed where the states fail,” said the organisation’s head of advocacy Sophie Scheytt.

“Unfortunately, the EU is not at all interested in implementing human rights at its external border.

“Not only does it support the so-called Libyan coastguard in the case of push-backs, contrary to international law, it even prioritises them.”

Ms Scheytt also alleged the EU’s mission against human smuggling, known as Operation Sophia, is using its reconnaissance planes to “delay the transmission of information to rescue forces so that shipwrecked persons are not rescued by an NGO but returned to Libyan torture camps.

“The EU is thus complicit in crimes against humanity. This practice must also end immediately.”

On Wednesday the Ocean Viking, a migrant rescue ship operated jointly by French NGOs Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and SOS Mediterranee, requested a port of safety (PoS) to disembark over 200 people on board it had rescued over three days in waters off the Libyan coast.

The Libyan maritime authority was the only Mediterranean nation to respond, assigning al-Khums as its nearest PoS.

“Libya is not a PoS,” SOS Mediterranee tweeted, “as recently stated by the [UN refugee agency] UNHCR. They must be promptly disembarked in a PoS that qualifies as such under intl law.”

Today the Ocean Viking asked both Malta and Italy to provide a PoS but has yet to receive a response from either nation.

Update: This afternoon the Ocean Viking was instructed to transfer the 35 people it rescued yesterday from a wooden boat in waters Malta is responsible for operating rescue missions in to a Maltese military vessel. 

The remaining 182 survivors from other rescues, including a newborn, children and a pregnant woman, remain on board, with no port assigned. 

“This shameful decision to leave the remaining rescued people, who are all fleeing from Libya, demonstrates the discriminatory, arbitrary and inhumane nature of a system which continues to prioritise political gameplay above human lives and dignity,” MSF tweeted today. 

“European governments must stop these prolonged delays and ad-hoc petty negotiations, and set up as a matter of urgency, a disembarkation mechanism for all those rescued in the Mediterranean sea.”