In 2018, the captain of the merchant ship Asso 28 rescued around 100 people off the Libyan coast and brought them back to Tripoli, thus violating international law.
The captain of a merchant ship was sentenced to 1 year in prison by an Italian court for disembarking in Libya migrants he had just rescued in the Mediterranean in 2018, according to the judgment consulted on Friday by AFP.
The captain of the Italian ship Asso 28 was found guilty by a Naples court of violating international law which prohibits the forced return of 101 migrants to countries where their safety is not guaranteed.
On July 30, 2018, the ship Asso 28 rescued migrants, including five minors and five pregnant women, near an oil rig in international waters, before disembarking them in the port of Tripoli, and handing them over to the Libyan coast guard.
The NGOs welcomed the decision, like Médecins sans frontières (MSF) which, however, called on “Italy and Europe to immediately stop interceptions at sea and put an end to forced returns”. “It is an important first step but it is not enough: we need a radical change in the policies of Italy and Europe”, according to MSF.
“A Naples court convicted the captain of an Italian commercial vessel for returning people to Tripoli. This is what @SOSMedFrance has been advocating for 6 years: #Libya is not a safe place. In 2021, around 26,314 people were forcibly brought back to Libya,” SOS Mediterranean reacted on its Twitter account.
Libya is an important crossing point for tens of thousands of migrants, mostly from Saharan African countries, seeking each year to reach Europe via the Italian coasts, some 300 km away.
Since the start of the year, 1,465 migrants have drowned or gone missing in the Mediterranean, according to the latest figures from the International Organization for Migration.
