UPDATE
(Extract of an article by Liberties, 23 January 2020, accessible HERE)
Author: Jascha Galaski
“Italy’s highest court confirmed last Friday [17 January 2020] that the arrest of Carola Rackete in June was unlawful. To avoid similar mistakes happening in the future we need to reform the outdated Facilitation Directive.
🇮🇹The Italian Supreme Court confirmed today that I shouldn’t have been arrested in June for saving lives.
This is an important verdict for all sea rescue activists!
No one should be prosecuted for aiding people in need. The EU directive on “crimes of solidarity” needs reform.
— Carola Rackete (@CaroRackete) January 17, 2020
[…] The Facilitation Directive Rackete makes reference to states that anyone who facilitates illegal entry or transit is breaking the law (click here to access the directive). The problem is that it fails to distinguish between humanitarian assistance and human smuggling. It does not rule out imposing sanctions on those who act without profit motives.”
(Article by Info Migrants – Deutsche Welle, 3 July 2019 accessible HERE)
Author: DW
Carola Rackete, the 31-year-old German captain of a migrant rescue vessel, was detained in Italy after refusing to stand down in the face of military orders. Italy had banned the Sea-Watch ship from entering its waters.
Italian judge Alessandra Vella on Tuesday ruled that Sea-Watch captain Carola Rackete had not acted against the law when she refused to comply with a ban on entering Italy’s territorial waters.
Italian prosecutors requested the judge uphold a house arrest order in place since she was detained over the weekend. But the judge overturned the order, saying Rackete was “doing her duty saving human lives.”
“We are relieved our captain is free,” Sea-Watch International said in a tweet. “There were no grounds to keep her arrested, as her only ‘wrongdoing’ was to enforce human rights on the Mediterranean and to take responsibility where none of the European governments did.”
Rackete captained a vessel carrying more than 40 migrants. After weeks at sea, she decided to port in Lampedusa, dismissing a military order banning her vessel from entering Italian territorial waters. While attempting to dock her ship, she rammed into a police boat that was trying to block her maneuvers.
Trafficking claims
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right League Party, has threatened to use any means necessary to prevent vessels rescuing migrants off the coast of Libya from entering Italy. He has accused them of human trafficking.
But Sicily-based prosecutor Luigi Patronaggio on Tuesday told Italian lawmakers that investigators have yet to find evidence that rescue vessels, such as the Sea-Watch 3, were implicated in a trafficking scheme to funnel migrants to Europe
Human rights groups have criticized Salvini’s “repressive management of the migratory phenomenon,” saying it undermines the EU’s core values.
Nearly half a million irregular migrants have crossed the central Mediterranean and made landfall in Italy since 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration. Since January 340 migrants have died attempting the dangerous journey.
The Europe we want to live in fights #HumanTrafficking instead of taking it to a whole new level by paying external Militias to kidnap #refugees & #migrants and forcibly return them to inhumane detainment camps in #Libya where they’ll face exploitation on all levels. #EUmanity pic.twitter.com/S5DjYta9jT
— Sea-Watch International (@seawatch_intl) July 5, 2019
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Featured image: Picture-alliance/dpa/F.Gambarini