The delivery of migrants to the Libyan coastguard is a crime because Libya "is not a safe haven".
This is what is stated in a ruling from the Court of Cassation which made the conviction of the commander of the tugboat Asso 28 definitive, who on 30 July 2018 rescued 101 people in the central Mediterranean and brought them back to Libya, handing them over to the Tripoli Coast Guard.
For the supreme judges, encouraging the interceptions of the Tripoli coastguards falls within the illicit case of "the abandonment of minors or incapable persons in a state of danger and the arbitrary disembarkation and abandonment of persons".
The sentence essentially establishes that the 2018 episode was a collective pushback towards a country not considered safe, prohibited by the European Convention on Human Rights.
For Luca Casarini of the Mediterranean NGO Saving Humans, this sentence "has definitively clarified that the so-called "Libyan coast guard" cannot "coordinate" any rescue, because it is not able to guarantee respect for the human rights of the shipwrecked people and it also becomes a serious crime. order us to do it, as is happening now. Now we will finalize not only the appeals against the Piantedosi decree, which for this reason blocks the civil rescue ships, but also a large class action against the government and the Minister of the Interior and the Italy-Libya memorandum".
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