A 42-year-old man was handed an eight-day remand on Friday, accused of facilitating the illegal transportation of irregular migrants to Cyprus.

The remand is related to the detection of two boats with a total of 104 people on board off the coast of Cape Greco on Sunday. The boats were both approached by police vessels, but the people on board reportedly “refused to be transferred to the territory of the Republic.”

The police’s announcement also referred to the incident on Monday in which Lebanon refused to accept the repatriation of 116 Syrian nationals aboard the two boats which had arrived in Cyprus on Sunday.

They said the Lebanese authorities had refused to allow the boats to enter their territorial waters, and that as a result, the boats had returned to Cyprus.

Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou had said at the time that Lebanon has “a big problem” with migration that the matter will be “handled at a political level.”