Will Manuel Mallia please explain why “an angry dispute broke out” over giving this plane permission to land?
The Guardian yesterday reported on the case of Ifa Muaza, the Nigerian asylum seeker who went on hunger strike and hasn’t eaten for 90 days after being refused refugee status in Britain.
An attempt was made to deport him by private jet, despite the immense commotion and outrage that this caused. The plane had to turn back after being refused entry into Nigerian airspace. It made an attempt at landing here in Malta, but trouble broke out, of which – it goes without saying – we heard absolutely nothing from the authorities and the media here.
A major case like this, with Malta refusing respite landing for a plane carrying a dying man who had been in the air for more than 20 hours, whose case was making the headlines in Britain, and we have to read about it in The Guardian, which reported:
Home Office officials were refusing to comment on Saturday evening on an apparently botched effort to deport a seriously ill man from Britain by private plane. A jet chartered by the government was forced to return to the UK with Nigerian Ifa Muaza and immigration officials still on board, after a 20-hour flight that saw the plane prevented from entering Nigerian airspace. It diverted to Malta, where an angry dispute broke out with the authorities over the plane’s right to use its airstrip.
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http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/30/theresa-may-hunger-striker-ifa-muaza-asylum-uk
Issa ghada naqraw dwar l-istorja fit-Times of Malta, kif ta’ spiss wisq qed jigri dan l-ahhar dwar ahbarijiet li kienu jibqghu mistura ghal-poplu kieku ma jkunux rapportati f’dan il-blog.
You need to wait for at least 5 days.
Will the Prime Minister explain exactly what happened and why was the plane refused ?
That angry dispute sounds interesting. Who was angry here, and why?
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/16/end-of-life-plan-hunger-striker
Asked if he was prepared to die, he said: “I was afraid, but now I am a skeleton and almost dead.
“There is so little of me left and I am not afraid. But they – the authorities – have not treated me as a human being and that is wrong.”
For some reason I got a flashback of the Egypt Air flight 648 and its gruesome fate at the hands of KMB.
Bubu, my flashback is much more recent than the KMB fiasco.
This incident reminded me when a few months back P.M. Dr. J. Muscat wanted to send back to Africa a planeload of refugees, and was stopped by the European Court of Human Rights.
If Minister Mallia or any other top man in this government were involved in this case, we can only say ‘Shame on you for being so insensitive and inhuman’.
I can only imagine what Muscat would have done if he had been prime minister during Libya’s civil war in the case of those two pilots.
Somehow I don’t think he would have done the right thing and elevated Malta’s name in the international press – judging from his record .
Experience proves me right. He would have called the plight of Libya a storm in a teacup, something seasonal which the rains will wash away. Then, afterwards, we shall see.
This post on the other hand says otherwise on the use of the airstrip…so which one was it?
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/12/514003.html?c=on
[Daphne – It does not say the opposite. The Guardian report said there was a fierce dispute about the plane landing in Malta, and not that the plane didn’t land.]
BBC Radio 4 Today program this morning mentioned this case and the woman being interviewed mentioned that the plane landed in Malta for a couple of hours.
While the plane was on the ground did a doctor go on board to check on the health Mr Muaza?
The woman being interviewed stated that the last time a doctor attended Mr Muaza was before the flight took off from the UK and no doctor had seen him since he arrived back in the UK.