It ended, after 7 years, with the sentence of no place to proceed the 10 defendants accused of aiding and abetting illegal immigration, the criminal proceedings against members of the crew of the NGOs Jugend Rettet, Save The Children and Doctors Without Borders. The humanitarian organizations were accused by the Trapani prosecutors of having made agreements with human traffickers and of not having actually provided assistance to the refugees but of having acted as “taxis” for them, transferring them from Libyan ships which they would then have allowed to go back undisturbed.
The judge who issued the sentence with the formula because the fact does not exist is Samuel Corso. The refusal to proceed had been requested by the Trapani Public Prosecutor’s Office after an investigation costing around 3 million euros. The Ministry of the Interior was a civil party in the proceedings and deferred to the preliminary hearing judge’s decision. The prosecutors had also ordered the seizure of the Iuventa vessel of the NGO Jugend Rettet, one of the three humanitarian organizations involved. The ship has meanwhile suffered enormous damage and is unusable.
“The ruling of the Court of Trapani on the Juventa case restores dignity to all those who save lives at sea and who too often, for political reasons, have been criminalised”. This was declared by the provincial secretary of the PD Domenico Venuti and the president of the provincial assembly Valentina Villabuona. “There remains regret for the long investigation and for a ship stopped for 8 years which could have saved many lives, at a time when, in the absence of rescue missions and with the restrictions introduced by the national government, deaths in the Mediterranean are increasing. We express satisfaction for the acquittal of the suspects by the Court of Trapani – conclude Venuti and Villabuona -, underlining with conviction that the only law to be applied in the event of shipwrecks is the law of the sea, which requires rescue and landing in a safe haven and we thank all the NGOs who resist, despite the difficult historical moment and who are engaged in rescue operations on a daily basis.”
