Italian justice dismisses case against three NGOs accused of promoting irregular immigration

The Italian justice system has dismissed the case opened against 21 aid workers belonging to three maritime rescue NGOs accused of promoting irregular immigration. With a cost of three million euros for the state coffers and seven years of judicial process, this case has become the longest, most expensive and extensive against NGOs operating in the Mediterranean in Italy. For the organizations involved, it has been a symbol of the Italian Government’s efforts to criminalize rescue work in the Mediterranean.

The cooperators indicted and now acquitted are four crew members of the ship Iuventa, from the German NGO Jugend Rettet, and 17 other humanitarian workers belonging to Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders (MSF). They faced up to 20 years in prison for allegedly reaching agreements with human traffickers and acting as taxis of migrants. Sascha Girke, one of the defendants of the Iuventa, has denounced that as a result of a “flawed” and “politically motivated” process, thousands of people have died in the Mediterranean or have been forcibly returned to war-devastated Libya. “Our case serves as an obvious symbol of the strategies that European governments are implementing to prevent people from reaching a safe place, which causes and normalizes the deaths of thousands,” she lamented.

The investigation was initiated at the end of 2016 by the Trapani Prosecutor’s Office (Sicily) after the NGOs were accused of favoring irregular immigration during three different rescue operations. He IuventaIt had rescued around 14,000 people since 2016 until its seizure in August 2017 in a port on the island of Lampedusa, according to the NGO Jugend Rettet. In addition to the ship, the organization’s phones and computers were also seized, which supposedly demonstrated the relationship between its workers and traffickers, something they have always categorically denied. “They have tried for years to tarnish the work of humanitarian search and rescue teams. They intended to keep ships away from the sea and counteract their efforts to save lives. Now, these accusations have collapsed,” said Christos Christou, international president of MSF.

Subsequently, an investigation by the Italian newspaper Domanirevealed that the Italian Ministry of the Interior had ordered an investigation into the NGOs despite not having concrete evidence. To achieve this, hidden microphones had been placed on the crew and informants had infiltrated other rescue ships. The Trapani judges in charge of the investigation had secretly recorded the calls between the aid workers and different journalists. At that time, Marco Minniti was Minister of the Interior, promoter of a code of conduct for maritime rescue NGOs that they refused to sign for restricting their activities and not respecting international maritime law, which prioritizes the safeguarding of human lives over from any other consideration. “This was a huge accusation based on conjecture, wiretapping, false statements and a deliberately distorted interpretation of the rescue mechanisms to present them as criminal acts,” MSF said.

After five years of investigation, preliminary hearings began in 2022 and in these two years more than 40 statements have been heard. On February 28, the Prosecutor’s Office requested a dismissal due to the lack of incriminating evidence and the Italian Ministry of the Interior, as the plaintiff, said it would accept the court’s decision. Finally, this Thursday a judge in Sicily dropped all charges against the accused.

NGO criminalization paradigm

The case IuventaIt is considered the paradigm of attempts to stop the work of NGOs working in humanitarian maritime rescue work and marked the beginning of a public smear campaign against civil rescue in the Mediterranean. Considered the largest aquatic cemetery in the world, it is estimated that at least 28,000 migrants have died or disappeared in the last decade while trying to reach Europe, according to the International Organization for Migration.

In a statement, the crew of the Iuventarecalled that the repressive measures continue today, only now they focus on administrative obstruction, as in the case of the anti-immigration measures approved by the Government of the far-right Giorgia Meloni, “which confirms the persistence of the Italian State in the embargo of maritime rescue and its responsibility” in the deaths of thousands of people, maintains the NGO.

These rules, approved at the end of 2022, contemplate assigning distant ports to ships to disembark survivors or prohibiting more than one rescue at a time. NGOs warn that these are regulations that prevent saving lives and that they add to European policies of outsourcing border management to unsafe third countries, such as Libya or Tunisia, with whom the EU and Italy have signed different agreements to send back to migrants intercepted at sea.

As a result of the introduction of these repressive laws, according to the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, as of June 2023, EU states have launched at least 63 judicial or administrative cases against NGOs. Last year alone, Italian authorities made 21 arrests of humanitarian rescue vessels. Among these, the ship Geo Barentsfrom MSF, and the Open Armsfrom the Spanish NGO of the same name, which have been prohibited on several occasions from going out to sea for periods of up to a month and have been fined up to 10,000 euros.

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