Migrants, the Iuventa was not a sea taxi: the 10 defendants in Trapani acquitted after 7 years

The criminal proceedings against members of the crew of the NGOs Jugend Rettet, Save The Children and Doctors Without Borders have ended after 7 years with the ruling of no place to prosecute the 10 defendants accused of aiding and abetting illegal immigration. . 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 Samuele 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.

«After seven years of false accusations, defamatory slogans and a blatant campaign of criminalization of the organizations involved in sea rescue, the maxi-investigation launched by the Trapani prosecutor’s office in the autumn of 2016 falls, the first of the sad era of propaganda that transformed sea ​​taxi rescuers and friends of traffickers.” Doctors Without Borders says this regarding the sentence that acquits the NGOs Jugend Rettet, Save The Children and MSF “of the inadmissible accusation of aiding and abetting illegal immigration”. “A mammoth accusatory system – adds MSF – based on inferences, wiretaps, false testimonies and a deliberately distorted interpretation of the rescue mechanisms to present them as criminal acts”.

«The castle of unfounded accusations that for over seven years have deliberately tarnished the work and credibility of humanitarian ships to remove them from the Mediterranean and stop their rescue and reporting action is collapsing – says Christos Christou, international president of MSF -. But the attacks on solidarity continue through a series of other actions: restrictive decrees, detention of civilian ships, support for the Libyan coast guard which dangerously hinders rescue efforts and fuels suffering and violations, while deaths at sea continue to increase.”