The Italian Justice declares the dismissal of the case against the NGOs for saving migrants after seven years of proceedings

MSF celebrates the end of a “flagrant criminalization campaign” after years of “unfounded accusations”

April 19 () –

The Italian Justice has declared this Friday the dismissal, due to the absence of facts constituting a crime, of the case opened in 2016 against the four crew members of the German humanitarian ship 'Iuventa' and 17 other collaborators from various NGOs for allegedly facilitating illegal migration

The decision, adopted by the court of the town of Trapani, thus responds to the request made on March 28 by the local Prosecutor's Office, which also requested the return of the ship, seized by the authorities in 2017. It should be remembered that the NGO Iuventa Last year, he filed a criminal complaint with the Trapani Prosecutor's Office for the crimes of abandonment and destruction of private property due to the state in which the vessel is located after its seizure.

“A trial that should never have started ends,” Iuventa announced this Friday on his social network account X. “After five years of investigation and two years of preliminary trial, both the Prosecutor's Office and the judge have admitted that the accusations were unfounded, in what is confirmed as a political persecution by the Italian authorities with the sole objective of pitting society against migrants,” they indicated.

A total of 21 members of NGOs and humanitarian ship owners were accused of maintaining contacts with traffickers in rescues carried out in the central Mediterranean between 2016 and 2017 in a case based, according to Doctors Without Borders, on “conjectures, wiretapping, statements false claims and a deliberately distorted interpretation of rescue mechanisms to present them as criminal acts.

MSF recalls that “the same prosecutor who opened the investigation” has acknowledged that “the evidence showed that the NGOs were working with the sole intention of saving lives” while the judge has alleged “a lack of foundation in the accusations and erased any suspicion.” of collaboration with traffickers”.

“These unfounded accusations have attempted for years to tarnish the work of humanitarian search and rescue teams. They sought to drive ships away from the sea and counteract their efforts to save lives and bear witness. Now, these accusations have collapsed,” said the international president of MSF, Christos Christou.

“Our thoughts are with our colleagues at MSF and other organizations who have worked under the weight of accusations for legitimately doing their job: saving people in danger at sea, with full transparency and in compliance with the laws,” Christou added.

The humanitarian chief recalls that, according to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, EU States have launched at least 63 judicial or administrative cases against search and rescue NGOs until June last year and that the Italian authorities They detained humanitarian rescue vessels on 21 occasions, which meant 460 days in which they were prevented from assisting people in danger at sea.

In fact, the MSF search and rescue ship, 'Geo Barents', has just resumed operations after “twenty days of unjust detention under the fallacious accusation of endangering people's lives, after a Libyan patrol boat violently interrupted a rescue operation underway.

“In these years, the Italian authorities have invested enormous resources in creating barriers to humanitarian action and in policies of death, while doing nothing to stop shipwrecks and open legal and safe routes for people fleeing across the Mediterranean,” says another of those involved in the case, the former general coordinator of MSF, Tommaso Fabbri.

“Saving lives is not a crime, it is a moral and legal obligation, a fundamental act of humanity that simply must be done. Stop criminalizing solidarity. All efforts must be directed to avoiding unacceptable deaths and suffering and guaranteeing the right to rescue, returning humanity and the right to life in the Mediterranean Sea,” Fabbri concluded.