“The fact does not exist.” Translated, the infamous “sea taxis” were not there. The sentence of the Trapani preliminary hearing judge Samuele Corso thus closed the trial of the Iuventa case, without even opening the trial phase. The crew members of the NGO ship Jugend Rettet were accused together with other people from MSF and Save the Children of having favored illegal immigration. But the very long and troubled phase dedicated to the preliminary hearing (costing the State around 3 million euros) did not result in any indictment for the 10 defendants. Furthermore, it was the Trapani prosecutor’s office itself, having noted the absence of substantial evidence and the lack of reliability of the witnesses themselves, who asked not to proceed further. Even the Ministry of the Interior, which was a civil party, withdrew from the trial, deferring to the judge’s decision.
The investigation, which started in 2016, lasted 4 years: it was based on the story of some security personnel on board the Save the Children ship, who revealed to secret service men how, on at least three occasions, the NGOs had agreed with human traffickers, simulating non-existent emergency situations and even returning the boats to the smugglers. The investigations were then extended to MSF and Jugend Rettet. In that period the Gentiloni government launched the “code of conduct” for NGOs involved in sea rescue. The German organization branded the document as a real threat to those operating in the Mediterranean and refused to sign it. The Iuventa was seized in August 2017, and has remained in that condition to this day. Now, corroded by salt and even vandalized, it is an unusable carcass. Some newspapers of the time even had the headline “Pact between the NGO and the smugglers” on the front page. Now the judges have ruled that the accusation was so unfounded that there is no need to even go to trial. But the damage remains.
«An odyssey that lasted seven years. After two years of over 40 preliminary hearings, this case confirms itself as the longest, most expensive and largest proceeding against search and rescue NGOs, an emblematic example of the great efforts made by the authorities to criminalize migration” they explain from Jugend Rettet. While “welcoming” the sentence of the Trapani preliminary hearing judge, the Iuventa crew expresses “great disappointment at the irreparable damage inflicted by the investigation and the trial”. However, there is no time to wallow in bitterness, the volunteers are already thinking about returning to sea “to resume rescue missions as soon as possible”.
Lawyer Alessandro Gamberini, lawyer for the German NGO, observes that “this process is one of the origins of evil, of the defamation of NGOs, often accused of being accomplices of traffickers”. Instead «the acquittal formula says that there was nothing, the material conduct was missing. The facts have not been proven and were not demonstrable as we argued with requests for dismissal from the prosecutor’s office.”
Relief and a sense of revenge also on the part of the other two NGOs. «It is an important moment for the entire world of humanitarian aid, because justice is being restored to the rescue activities and to the many operators involved in saving lives» commented Rafaela Milano, spokesperson for Save The Children. «This sentence – she continued – gives back the meaning of a job that has been hit by ignoble accusations and marks a fundamental step because it tells us that rescue at sea cannot be put in second place. Let’s just hope that it opens a new phase for the whole of Europe.”
Doctors Without Borders removes a pebble from their shoe: «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 autumn 2016 falls, the before the sad era of propaganda that transformed rescuers into “sea taxis” and “friends of traffickers”. MSF defines the investigation as “a mammoth accusatory system based on allegations, wiretaps, false testimonies and a deliberately distorted interpretation of the rescue mechanisms to present them as criminal acts”. The ruling sets a firm point from which to start again. «Now we need to work so that helping lives is universally seen as a value to be defended» underlined Serena Chiodo, campaigner at Amnesty International.
Tags: NGO ship blocked years sea taxi
