Italy is to turn its Albania migrant processing centres into holding prisons for failed asylum seekers after courts blocked the prime minister’s original crackdown.

Under the initial plan, migrants and refugees were to be intercepted in the Mediterranean by Italian navy ships and transferred to the centres in northern Albania.

They were to be subjected to a fast-track system of processing, which was supposed to take no more than 30 days per individual.

Those who had their asylum applications rejected – which was expected to be the majority of them – were to be sent back to their home countries.