Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/622858
maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 6 JANuArY 2016 7 Continues from Page 1 Other countries, including Luxembourg and Cyprus, have relocated a small number of people but the bloc has once again failed to live up to ex- pectations. The emergency relocation mech- anism promoted by the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, includes a relocation of refugees by quota – allocating refugees to member states. However, many countries – particularly in Eastern Eu- rope – have refused to accept the scheme. The plan has been hindered by political bickering and an Italian official was quoted as saying that "at this rate, it will take until the end of this century to relocate all 40,000 refugees." But nonetheless, Malta's efforts do not match up to rhetoric by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who was a vocal supporter of the relocation effort. While the government went to great lengths to justify the Val- letta Summit on Migration and the CHOGM by commissioning international advertising agency M&C Saatchi to quantify the ef- fectiveness of the events in terms of exposure, Malta has yet to take in any refugees. Malta was first expected to take in 300 refugees from Italy and Greece back in June, with Muscat describing the distribution key as "the solidarity the government had always sought." Muscat had insisted Malta had to be consistent with its long-held position that the migration burden should be shared. "I prefer taking in 120 migrants entering the country legally by plane and knowing that we can handle them rather than thousands coming here illegally by sea, which can create a burden. At the same time I have my mind at rest that, if an emergency crops up, Malta will also be helped." In September, Muscat said Malta was playing its part in the humani- tarian crisis that refugees were go- ing through by taking part in an EU plan to relocate and resettle asylum seekers. At this point, the number of relo- cated refugees to Malta had fallen to 133. "Although we had our own issues with refugee numbers in the past, Malta is willing to accept refugees from Italy and Greece," Muscat said. He was more cautious when asked why Malta was not issuing humanitarian visas to Syrian refu- gees. "It is not always easy to bal- ance the necessary bureaucratic processes and the humanitarian needs," Muscat said. "We face many challenges in this regard because it is often difficult to obtain and verify information about applicants to be sure there are no abuses." According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), at least one million migrants en- tered Europe last year, with over 800,000 of those traveling from Turkey to Greece—half of them Syrian. The figures for 2014 were 280,000 detected migrants, and 570,000 asylum applications. News Investigators cold on terrorism links of Malta-bound Syrians Syrian couples travelling from Italy to Malta could have been using various airports to travel into uK, according to La Stampa report matthew Vella An unsuspecting transit stop through Malta International Airport has been cited as a "new route" for illegal migration, ac- cording to Italian newspaper La Stampa. Malta, Genoa, and Bergamo's Orio al Serio featured recently in arrests of Syrian travellers pass- ing through passport control with false documents, and in some cas- es, carrying mobile phone photo- graphs of Islamic State fighters. But detectives who spoke to La Stampa claim their ultimate des- tination is London. What the recent episodes show so far, according to counter-ter- rorism police sources who spoke to the newspaper, was that without evidence to the contrary, "every- thing suggests that we are looking at migrant trafficking episodes, two of which are certainly linked. But we are prepared to reconsider the episodes if further evidence emerges." Three recent episodes of the air- port arrests seem to attest to the idea that Italy was being used as a transit area, and the decision to use "provincial" airports was to test police responsiveness to ille- gal movements. The bizarre route undertaken by the Syrians was to enter the Schengen zone from Turkey through Greece, the Balkans, or Italy, in order to reach Malta and then maybe – according to inves- tigators' hypotheses – to fly from there to the United Kingdom. "Initial evidence suggests that the episodes in Orio al Serio and in Ciampino are linked. They are linked first and foremost by shar- ing the same final destination for the two couples travelling, namely Malta. "The two couples detained in Orio al Serio and in Ciampino were attempting to reach Malta, which hosts a large Syrian commu- nity. The Mediterranean island, however, is unlikely to have been their final destination; their jour- ney should likely have continued from there to a country in north Europe," La Stampa reported. The two Syrian couples reached Italy overland, via the Balkan route. One of the two people de- tained at Orio al Serio on 18 no- vember and subsequently inves- tigated on a charge of association and recruitment for the purpose of international terrorism, had a photograph in his smartphone showing him wearing an ISIL uni- form. He justified the photograph by saying that he had been forced to play the cop and to direct traffic at a crossroads in Al-Raqqa. The two people detained in Ciampino the day before, on 17 november, also had forged IDs, one of them purporting to be norwegian, the other French. Bergamo's Orio al Serio featured recently in arrests of Syrian travellers passing through passport control with false documents relocation mired in political and logistical problems ! ! 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