On the 20th anniversary of the founding of Frontex, new details about its complicity with the Libyan Coast Guard have come to light. Activists and lawyers are protesting and taking legal action.

The European border agency Frontex has invested over €500 million in aerial surveillance in the Mediterranean region since 2017. This is reported by the Italian newspaper “Altreconomia” and complements new investigations by the Liminal research project. Its research shows that the surveillance equipment is not used to protect people at sea, but to force them back to Libya or Tunisia.

Liminal was founded two years ago at the University of Bologna for the forensic investigation of border violence. In an exhibition currently on display in Paris, Liminal documents at least 240 new cases in which Frontex reconnaissance flights specifically reported boats in the central Mediterranean to the Libyan or Tunisian Coast Guards, who then took the refugees back to the North African countries against their will. Between 2019 and 2023 alone, over 27,000 people were affected by such pullbacks.

Liminal’s research is based on 319,000 data records from the “Joint Operation Reporting Application” (JORA), Frontex’s internal database system. This is where the agency records all of its activities, including in the central Mediterranean. In a total of 473 cases, Frontex detected boats carrying refugees on their way to Europe before Libyan or Tunisian units intercepted them and forced them to return. The research shows that these routines are not random, but that the reconnaissance flights as part of the Frontex operation “Themis” are used strategically for migration defence.

A significant part of Frontex’s surveillance work is carried out by drone missions. Among others, the border agency uses two “Heron” drones, produced by the Israeli defence company Israel Aerospace Industries, which are also used for military purposes in the Gaza Strip. One of these drones is stationed in Malta and another in Crete. Frontex tested another drone from Israel in 2019, but this “‘Hermes”’ suffered a total loss after a few months.

Using JORA datasets from 2016 onwards, the Liminal researchers were able to reconstruct a significant number of cases in which the Frontex surveillance service recorded boats before they were turned back to Libya or Tunisia. These pullbacks are carried out in cooperation with the Libyan Coast Guard, which has received financial and organisational support from the EU since 2017.

A new set of JORA data requested by Liminal via a Freedom of Information request shows that surveillance teams in Warsaw, where Frontex is based, analyse images in real time and make decisions on who to notify for pullbacks in North Africa. For Operation “Themis” alone, Liminal documented 473 previously unknown cases in which boats were discovered by Frontex and then pulled back to Libya or Tunisia.

“The chain of responsibility in these operations is extremely complex”, Giovanna Reder from Liminal emphasises to “nd”. The information gathered by aircraft and drones passes through several instances, from Warsaw to the operations control centres in Italy, Malta and Greece.

Liminal shows how Frontex conceals the pullbacks by systematically labelling the operations in the JORA datasets as “prevention of departures”. “Frontex is thus continuing a trend that we have been observing for a long time”, says Reder. Accordingly, the agency is also becoming increasingly non-transparent and is disclosing less and less data in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Libyan Coast Guard has long been suspected of severely mistreating intercepted persons and detaining and abusing them in prisons under conditions that violate human rights. Despite ample evidence of the catastrophic conditions in Libyan camps, Frontex has so far shown no inclination to end its cooperation with the Coast Guard. On the contrary: Frontex’s monitoring capacities have been massively expanded in recent years.

However, Article 46 of the Frontex Regulation, which is relevant to human rights issues, requires the agency to stop such operations if they promote human rights violations, as in Libya or Tunisia, which encourages pogroms against refugees and abandons them in the desert.

In response to this practice, which violates international law, the legal organisation Front-Lex, together with the group Refugees in Libya, has taken legal action against Frontex before the European Court of Justice. A plaintiff from Sudan, who has been living in Libyan detention under dangerous conditions since 2019, accuses Frontex of having facilitated his forced repatriation and subsequent torture in Libya by sharing location data.

Front-Lex lawyer Ifatch Cohen demands on behalf of the plaintiff that Frontex take the protection of human rights seriously. In his argumentation, he refers to EU law, according to which the indirect promotion of human rights violations is not permitted. There is already sufficient evidence of Frontex’s co-responsibility for crimes against humanity in Libya, explains Cohen when asked by “nd”. What is needed is not more evidence, but a competent court that grants Frontex victims access to legal protection. “We hope that judge Maria José Costeira will finally allow our case to proceed”, said the lawyer.

The 24 October 2024 was the 20th anniversary of the founding of Frontex. There were demonstrations, events and actions in several cities in Europe and Africa, including Brussels, Berlin, Bregenz, Innsbruck, Calais and Dakar.

The Alarm Phone network, which consists of hundreds of volunteers and celebrated its tenth anniversary in October, also met in the Senegalese capital at the beginning of October. Refugees on the Mediterranean can use the emergency number to ask for help. The Alarm Phone forwards these messages to the relevant maritime rescue centres in the central Mediterranean.

For 3,650 days and nights, they have been on duty, the network explains. During this time, the activists have been alerted to over 8,000 boats “from all corners of the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic region or the English Channel”.

Published in German in „nd“.

Image: An Israeli ‘Heron’ at the international airport in Valletta. Frontex has stationed aerial surveillance aircraft and drones in Malta, Italy and Greece (Border Forensics).