Leona Blankenstein couldn’t believe what she heard as the Libyan Coast Guard threatened to blow her small plane out of the sky.

The German doctor was on a reconnaissance plane operated by the Sea-Watch rescue organization when she encountered the Fezzan patrol boat picking up migrants in Maltese waters on October 25.

“Get out of Libyan territorial waters or we will shoot you with SAM (surface-to-air) missiles,” warned the ship, one of several Italy handed over to migrants under a disputed EU-backed deal to Libya to prevent it from reaching the country Europe.

According to Sea-Watch footage, the Libyans brought the migrants on board before sinking their rubber boat with incendiary ammunition.

“It happened in just a matter of seconds … Their behavior is highly unpredictable, so you never know what they’re going to do next,” she said.

The warning “was threat enough for me to leave the area immediately,” she added.

The 2017 deal has come under renewed scrutiny since the government of far-right Italian leader Giorgia Meloni took office and took a tough stance on asylum seekers rescued at sea.

Despite years of criticism from charities and human rights groups, Italy quietly renewed the deal earlier this month.

Activists say nearly 100,000 people have been intercepted by the Libyans since the deal in which Italy and the EU agreed to train and equip Libya’s coastguards.

The deal came under pressure to deal with large numbers of refugees fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Libya to Europe.

It also followed a string of deadly shipwrecks with a record 5,000 people dying or missing in the Mediterranean in 2016.

The European Commission has said the agreement aims to “prevent the loss of life in the Mediterranean Sea while tackling migrant smuggling and human trafficking networks”.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2,062 people were reported dead or missing last year.

Center for European Reforms analyst Luigi Scazzieri said working with other countries to prevent arrivals is a “key focus” of European politics.

The deal between Italy and Libya has proven “very effective” in reducing the number of arrivals – at least initially.

But charities are denouncing a situation in the “Wild West” where armed militias are posing as the Libyan Coast Guard and live ammunition is being used against migrant boats in the open sea.

Critics stress a lack of accountability, with little public information about who receives the money in Libya.

In the meantime, many of those intercepted are said to have ended up in Libyan prisons.

According to Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International, many migrants in Libya are being tortured, sexually abused or used as slaves.

Libyan authorities deny reports that migrants are being mistreated.

“The arrests are being carried out in accordance with current rules,” said a migration official.

Activists also claim that the EU border protection agency Frontex, which uses planes to spot migrants in distress, is helping Libya.

Felix Weiss, spokesman for Sea-Watch’s Seabird department, said: “The Libyan Coast Guard is not professional, they need EU aerial surveillance and guidance to find the migrant boats.”

Human rights lawyer Arturo Salerni told AFP that “withdrawing” migrants from European search and rescue areas to Libya is illegal under EU law “if European states are complicit”.

The Italian government did not respond to requests for comment.

Italy receives tens of thousands of people each year attempting to cross the central Mediterranean, the world’s deadliest migration route.

It had numerous agreements with Libyan dictator Muamer Gaddafi in the 2000s to curb migration flows before he was overthrown in 2011.

In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Italy for intercepting and forcibly deporting people to Libya, prompting a new approach.

After the 2017 deal, rescue organizations “were ordered by Italy to alert the Libyan Coast Guard instead,” according to Chiara Denaro of Alarm Phone, a hotline used by migrants in distress.

The deal quickly drew criticism, as the UN imposed human trafficking sanctions on several Libyans in 2018.

Among them was Ahmad Oumar al-Dabbashi, who controlled militia camps and boats.

He subjected migrants, including minors, to “brutal and sometimes fatal conditions on land and at sea,” according to the UN.

In 2019, Italian newspaper L’Avvenire revealed another well-known trafficker, Abd Al Rahman al-Milad, who was actually present during talks with Italian officials in Sicily over the drafting of the 2017 deal.

Milad was suspended from the Libyan Coast Guard after being put on the United Nations sanctions list in 2018 but remained involved in “rescuing migrants” the following year, according to a UN report cited by L’Avvenire.

Last month, Sea-Watch released images proving the Libyan Coast Guard was working with people smugglers: a ship pictured twice with different migrants on board, three days apart.

That indicated it had been returned to Libya and reused, Sea-Watch said.

The EU provided around €59 million between 2015 and 2020, when it was recruited, to strengthen the Libyan Coast Guard’s operational capacity, including training around 500 members.

There are plans to resume training, but talks are ongoing with the Libyans, “with a key focus on human rights and international law,” an EU spokeswoman told AFP.

Italy has committed at least €32.5 million to operations in support of the Libyan Coast Guard since 2017, humanitarian organization Arci said in a report last year.

In October, investigative journalist Duccio Facchini revealed that just a few months ago, Italy spent a further €6.65 million on 14 new speedboats for the Libyan Coast Guard.

Amnesty said it was “shameful” that Rome “continues to assist the Libyan authorities in violating the human rights of their people”.

“It adds insult to injury that the Italian government refuses to disembark even those who have managed to leave this country,” it said.

Sea-Watch is one of several charities operating rescue vessels in the Mediterranean that are in the crosshairs of Meloni’s new government.

Italy last weekend refused to give safe harbors to four ships before eventually allowing three to disembark.