Italian Constitutional Court docket holds hearing on detention of rescue ship in 2024

The Italian Constitutional Court docket held a hearing on Wednesday morning in Rome to rule on the detention of a civilian ship that rescued 261 migrants in the Mediterranean Sea in 2024.

The Ocean Viking salvage vessel, flee by the European charity SOS Mediterranée, used to be detained for no longer complying with the orders of the Libyan Flit Guard to abandon the scene of a rescue in February 2024. SOS Mediterranée saved 261 americans in wound in three assorted rescues.

According to the experiences of the humanitarian organisation, the first boat with 110 americans on board used to be about to fracture apart, the second had leaked gasoline on board and the third used to be taking water and leaning dangerously to one facet.

Despite the life-threatening situation of the americans on board of the three boats, the Libyan fly guard ordered Ocean Viking crew to leave the rescue zone.

Once docked in the Italian port of Brindisi, SOS Mediterranée’s ship received a 20-day detention sing and a 3.300 euros fine. SOS Mediterranée appealed the decision, maintaining that’s used to be their responsibility to rescue the americans in wound and that Libya is no longer a protected country.

A determine in Brindisi in the context of the trial that adopted raised the case to the Constitutional Court docket. The decision of the court docket might perchance per chance perchance maintain a distinguished influence on the anti-migrant insurance policies of the Italian some distance honest government lead by Giorgia Meloni, as she cracked down on humanitarian rescue organisations, accusing them of interfering with national border control.

Since 2015, the European Union has been funding the Libyan fly guard as section of efforts to stem the circulation of migrants from the North African country in the direction of Italian shores.

As section of the deal, the fly guard has intercepted migrants in Libyan and international waters and has returned them to Libya. Varied organizations maintain strongly criticized, what they call, the criminalization of the humanitarian actions of search and rescue in the central Mediterranean.

In 2025, almost 50,000 americans reached Italy by sea and 454 died in the strive to inaccurate the Mediterranean Sea from Northern Africa to Europe on rickety boats, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

No date for the verdict of the constitutional court docket has been plot but.

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