The handing over of migrants to the Libyan coast guard 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.
Repubblica writes about the sentence.
For the supreme judges, encouraging the interceptions of Tripoli's 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 rejection towards a country not considered safe, prohibited by the European Convention on Human Rights.
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