1. On the same day on which, after the government asked to form a civil party, the Judge of the preliminary hearing in Trapani closes the Iuventa trial, stating that “the fact does not exist”, making clear the frame-up against humanitarian relief, the Civil Court of Crotone, after having heard the parties, confirms the suspension of the administrative detention of SOS Huamnity, recognizing the state of the documents, as reported by ANSA, that “that of the Libyan coast guard was a “non-existent” rescue operation and therefore “no obstructive conduct can be found” towards Humanity 1 “which, in this context, was the only vessel to intervene to fulfill, in sense recognized by international sources, to the duty to rescue migrants at sea”. Pending the hearing on the merits which will be held on June 26th, according to the order of the Court of Crotone, “it cannot be considered that the activity carried out by the Libyan coast guard can be classified as a rescue activity due to the very ways in which this activity was carried out. In fact, it constitutes an undisputed and documented circumstance that the Libyan personnel were armed and that, during these activities, they had also fired shots; Likewise, it is a circumstance which can be deduced from the correspondence in the documents that no safe place appears to have been made known by the Libyan authorities themselves who intervened to coordinate the recovery operations of the migrants on site”.
The judge of the Court of Crotone, recalling the Convention on rescues at sea (SAR) of Hamburg, the Memorandum between the Italian government and the provisional government of Tripoli of 2 February 2017, and the 2021 UN reports, states that “At present it is not possible to consider Libya a safe place pursuant to the Hamburg Convention, as the Libyan context is characterized by serious and systematic violations of human rights and as the 1951 Geneva Convention on refugees has never been ratified by Libya”. So, “given the lack of a concomitant rescue operation carried out by the Libyan coast guard, no removal order is justifiable against the only vessel that carried out operations in fulfillment of the absolute duty to rescue at sea”.
As in the Iuventa case in Trapani, where criminal proceedings were underway, and evident falsehoods emerged in the prosecution’s charges, in the case of SOS Humanity the pecuniary sanction and the accessory measure of administrative detention were established on the basis of evidence considered in this unreliable judgment phase. According to what was declared by the president of the SOS Humanity Association, the ship’s humanitarian workers were the first to respond to emergency reports and arrive at the point where three boats were in evident situations. distress (danger). The rescue efforts had already begun, therefore, when a Libyan rubber boat suddenly arrived. At that point, as reported by the representative herself, “essentially armed people took control of two boats in difficulty with reckless maneuvers, forcing people to fall or jump into the water. The serious thing is that they fired shots into the water near the dinghies. And finally the crew was threatened with rifles and forced to abandon the scene which had been under control until recently”. Contrary to what was stated by the government, through its peripheral bodies, and by the State Attorney’s Office, the Court of Crotone recognizes in this regard that between the dangerous situation in which the castaways found themselves and the conduct of the SOS Humanity operators there is no ‘is any “causal link”.
2. The order of the Court of Crotone appears of particular importance because it recalls among the reasons the well-known jurisprudence of the Court of Cassation (sentence n.6626/2020 on the Rackete case) according to which “ it could not be considered, as the appellant argues, that the rescue activity of the shipwrecked people had ended with their recovery on board the ship. The obligation to provide assistance dictated by the Hamburg International SAR Convention does not end with the act of saving shipwrecked people from the danger of being lost at sea, but involves the accessory and consequent obligation to disembark them in a safe place (so-called place of safety)”.
For the Court of Crotone, even admitting that the interception activities in international waters of the so-called “Libyan” Coast Guard can be classified as search and rescue (SAR) activities, it must be recognized as “no expulsion order formulated can be considered legitimate, either at a national or supranational level”as the Coast Guard itself is unable to guarantee disembarkation in a safe port.
The Crotone judge’s order hits the crux of the Piantedosi Decree which reverberates in the most recurrent reasons in the administrative detention measures adopted against NGO ships. based on the accusation of having created a dangerous situation by not having interrupted their search and rescue activities, following the arrival of the Libyan patrol boat on duty, in the absence of true unified coordination of the rescue efforts. Which the Tripoli authorities, with their joint coordination center (JRCC), are evidently unable to guarantee, without the continuous support of Frontex air assets, engaged in tracking the boats, and without the communications guaranteed by the Coordination Center of the Italian Coast Guard (IMRCC) in Rome, on the recommendation of the Central Interforce Coordination Unit (NCC) of the Ministry of the Interior. In fact, it is from Rome, after the requests for intervention in rescue activities in international waters, in what is assumed to be the “Libyan” SAR area, that the instructions to contact the so-called “Libyan” Coast Guard originate. But the situation noted by the Court of Cassation with reference to the ASSO 28 case in 2018 Today it hasn’t improved at all. This is confirmed by the most recent reports from the UNSMIL mission to the United Nations Security Council.
It still appears evident today that Libya, which has not even ratified the 1951 Geneva Convention on refugees, cannot guarantee safe ports of disembarkation. This fact cannot be contradicted by the alleged illegitimate nature of the search and rescue activities carried out in the waters internationally by NGOs. The sentences of Court of Cassation on the Rackete case (n.6626/2020) and the numerous dismissals of criminal proceedings brought against NGOs prevent us from considering what are necessary search and rescue (SAR) events as mere “events connected to the migratory phenomenon” if not as “illegal immigration events”, as the Ministry of the Interior still describes them today. Instead, as is emerging in the civil precautionary proceedings which end with the suspension of the administrative detention measures, these are situations in which the people on board the boats leaving from Libya or Tunisia are already in distress (serious and current danger) proclaimed, in the face of which one cannot limit oneself to the mere communication, to the commander of the rescue ship, of the competence of the Libyan authorities to coordinate the rescue interventions, perhaps to await the arrival of the Tripoli patrol boat which orders the suspension of search and rescue activities by firing shots.
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Tags: disobeying Libyans legitimate
