Francesco Paolo Giordano, the chief prosecutor of Siracusa, told the Senate defense committee that his office had no evidence of links between NGOs involved in migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean and traffickers who sent refugees from Libya, often on unseaworthy dinghies and rickety boats.

"Our office does not have anything regarding alleged underhand, polluting links between NGOs, or parts of them and migrant traffickers. There are no investigative elements," he told the upper house committee.

The accusations that NGOs operating in the Mediterranean were colluding with human traffickers gathered attention after allegations by Catania Prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro. Zuccaro has been repeatedly saying that some of these non-profit organizations could be financed by human smugglers with the possible aim of destabilisng the Italian economy.

Monsignor Giancarlo Perego, the director of Migrantes, the migrants foundation of the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI) Tuesday blasted politicians who picked up on, and amplified, the reports of alleged links between rescue groups and human smugglers.

"It is right that the prosecutors and the judiciary are vigilant... so that migrants don't become two-fold victims," Perego said. "But the indistinct political fire on the nine NGOs that operate in the Mediterranean to save human lives ... was a hypocritical and shameful act," he added.

Meanwhile, the head of the parliamentary intelligence service oversight body COPASIR, Giacomo Stucchi, denied the existence of an intelligence-service dossier on the alleged connection between NGOs and migrant smugglers, saying such reports were "groundless."

Parties led by the anti-immigrant Northern League and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement have been using the reports of the alleged links to score political points and allegedly whip up anti-immigrant and anti-NGO sentiment.

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