Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Tuesday that asylum seekers who are rescued at sea while trying to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa should be sent back to the country they embarked from - usually Libya.
"You save them, as the Libyan coast guard did (at the weekend), and take them back," League leader Salvini told Mediaset television. "In that way people will stop paying human traffickers for a trip that has no future, because it ends in death or with an existence on Italy's streets".
Salvini reiterated that the government's stance of refusing access to Italian ports to NGO-run migrant rescue ships will continue.
This stance has come under renewed fire from from critics after 117 were reported missing, feared dead, when a migrant-boat sank in the Mediterranean last week. "The more people embark, the more people die," Salvini said.
"Those who love Africa should do everything to prevent them embarking".
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