The European Court of Human Rights yesterday ruled that Italy had violated fundamental rights in pushing migrants back to Libya against their will. Everyone always knew that this was the case, and the verdict has been a long time coming.

It is now evidently clear that the Muammar Gaddafi regime used these people as bargaining chips in his mad policies against Europe. On many occasions, they were forced to board rickety boats which were not seaworthy, crammed like sardines, and told to pilot the boats themselves.

We as a people, have not seen the tragedies unfold at sea. But our armed forces have. They have seen dead people wallowing in sea water at the bottom of a boat. They have seen boats capsize with massive loss of life. They have risked their own lives to rescue people in high seas.

But the truth of the matter is that immigrants were forced back to Libya, and they were forced back into conditions which were horrific. It is easy for Malta to hold its hand up and say that it had nothing to do with the operation, but if we put that same hand on heart, then surely, we must recognise that we were passive to what was going on in the seas around us. There is no doubt that the pushbacks were of benefit to Malta. The country’s infrastructure was creaking under the sheer weight of arrivals and the AFM was also stretched to breaking point as mission after mission was launched to rescue those who were stranded at sea.

And this is where Italy jumped in. After a meeting between Silvio Berlusconi and Muammar Gaddafi, it was agreed that Italy’s armed forces could engage in pushbacks and forced return to point of departure. From that point on, the arrivals dropped from about a thousand a month to just a few dribs and drabs. In the meantime, Malta continued with its efforts to clear up the backlog of detainees at the closed centres and move them to open centres, hoping that Europe would finally make good on its proposals for burden sharing.

Today, things are very different. The new Libya is not using migrants as a tool with which to blackmail Europe, yet we cannot deny that there are still major issues to be dealt with. It would, on the other hand, be unfair to lay the blame entirely on the Italians. Before the pushbacks deal (which this publishing house condemned from the outset), a Nato fleet had been deployed in the Mediterranean a few years ago. Its primary function was to conduct patrols to discourage illegal trade, however, the fleet also had a hand in policing the Med. It is always easy to be wise and right in hindsight. But the warning signs were all there. Virtually all the media in Malta picked up on the pushbacks story, and from many journalists having spent time with those who managed to make it to Malta, and hearing their stories, no one was convinced that this was the right way to go about things.

Sadly, it was a case of out of sight, out of mind. When people cannot see the state of these people when they arrive or are on boats as they come in, it is easy to think of them as unwanted visitors. But when you see it with your own eyes, smell the fetid smells, touch the rickety shambles of a boat which was used to cross 300 miles of rough seas and listen to their stories, then you begin to understand. This should never have happened, and Malta should not have stood by and watched.