The Agrigento prosecutor Giovanni Di Leo highlights in a note “the multiple regulatory, humanitarian and constitutional critical issues regarding rescue at sea” in relation to yet another immigration tragedy which led to the administrative decision to transfer 11 bodies of migrants recovered in sea in the port of Lampedusa, with a transshipment in progress from an NGO ship onto patrol boats of the Port Authority.
“The NGO ship – observes Di Leo – was given, according to what was communicated by the Judicial Police, the port of disembarkation in Genoa. In this way, the Agrigento Prosecutor’s Office, for the facts committed in international waters, would end up being given jurisdiction over the case, in relation to the destination of the bodies recovered in the open sea, which, as victims of the crime of aiding and abetting illegal immigration, would fulfill the conditions to assert jurisdiction and competence over the case.” The prosecutor highlights, however, that “any investigation on the case itself, however, should await the arrival in the port of Genoa of all the informed people (crew, rescued people, etc.), and obviously be carried out with delegation to that judicial authority or to the forces of police. Similarly, the Genoa Prosecutor’s Office, if it wanted to retain its jurisdiction over the case, should carry out urgent investigations on the bodies landed in Lampedusa, starting them several days after their transfer to land, and probable burial”.
Di Leo also underlines that “the island of Lampedusa is not equipped for the conservation of such a high number of corpses. Also in this case, therefore, we cannot understand the choice made to have them disembark in Lampedusa instead of, for example, in Porto Empedocle, where docking the ship would avoid a transhipment at sea”. “The application of the criminal law, the investigations envisaged by the procedural code as mandatory, the very determination of jurisdiction and criminal competence itself – concludes the Prosecutor – cannot, according to the Constitution, be left to discretionary decisions of the political-administrative authority , but only to the law itself.”
