ROME, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- An Italian court has ordered the seizure of a migrant rescue ship run by NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF), accusing the international medical aid group of illegal waste disposal, local media reported Tuesday.
The prosecutor's office in the Sicilian port city of Catania has accused the international medical aid NGO of illegally disposing of what it said are "contaminated clothes worn by non-EU citizens", Italian news agency ANSA reported.
The prosecution claims the clothes worn by the migrants are "dangerous" and could transmit "tuberculosis (TB), meningitis, and hepatitis", ANSA reported.
Neurologist Gianfranco De Maio, medical director of MSF Italy, said in a televised interview that the the prosecution's claims are "ridiculous" and based on "total ignorance of basic public health notions".
"Tuberculosis is an airborne respiratory disease and will never, under any circumstance, be transmitted by clothing," De Maio told RAI News 24 public broadcaster.
"You can't catch hepatitis from clothes either -- you'd have to eat the clothes to get infected," he continued, adding that it is "unacceptable" to accuse MSF, which is currently battling Ebola and cholera outbreaks in Africa, of placing lives at risk through faulty waste disposal.
At least a dozen people are under investigation for "knowingly contributing to a criminal plan" to illegally dispose of on-board waste in order to save 460,000 euros during 2017 and part of 2018, according to prosecution documents cited by ANSA.
MSF strenuously denied the accusations, saying it "always followed standard procedures" during in-port operations.
"After two years of defamatory and unfounded allegations of collusion with human traffickers, judicial investigations, and bureaucratic obstacles against our humanitarian work, we are now accused of organised crime aimed at illicit waste trafficking," Karline Kleijer, MSF's head of emergencies, said in a statement.
She called the move a "sinister attack by Italian authorities" and "a disproportionate and unfounded measure, purely aimed at further criminalising lifesaving medical-humanitarian action at sea."
MSF was one of several European NGOs that launched search-and-rescue vessels beginning in 2015 in response to mass drownings of migrants and asylum seekers in the Mediterranean.
The other aid groups were Save the Children, Sea Eye, Sea Watch, SOS Mediterranee, the Malta-based Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), Pro Activa Open Arms from Spain, and German youth group Jugend Rettet.
Most have suspended operations due to criminal investigations, ship seizures, and the closure of ports to any vessel carrying rescued migrants by Italy's new rightwing-populist government, which was seated in June this year.
In July, a Palermo court shelved a criminal investigation against Proactiva and Sea Watch, finding they acted in accordance with international law and had not colluded with migrant traffickers.
MSF, which has treated millions since its founding in 1971 and whose doctors are currently battling the latest deadly Ebola epidemic in the Central African Republic (CAR), was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.
