Sea Watch, new filing for Carola Rackete: “Duty to rescue”

New filing for Carola Rackete, the captain of the Sea Watch ship accused of aiding illegal immigration. According to the investigating judge of the court of Agrigento, Micaela Raimondo, Rackete did not commit any crime by entering the port of Lampedusa with the shipwrecked rescued at sea by Sea-Watch 3. “Carola Rackete acted in the fulfillment of the rescue duty provided for by national law and international sea “reads the archiving provision. Rackete had already been definitively acquitted of the accusation of resistance to a public official and violence against a warship that arose from the alleged ramming of the Guardia di Finanza patrol boat on June 29, 2019. The new proceeding concerned Rackete’s decision to enter territorial waters despite the ban on entry due to the Security Decree signed by the then Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini. Therefore, to the accusation of refusal of obedience to a warship was added that of aiding and abetting illegal immigration for having allowed the castaways on board to enter Italian territory, over 50, including pregnant women and newborns. – “At the outcome of the investigations, no elements emerged that could support the accusatory hypothesis against” Carola Rackete, writes the investigating judge of the Court of Agrigento in the filing order. The investigating judge accepted the filing request of the Public Prosecutor, signed by the Deputy Prosecutor Salvatore Vella and by the prosecutor Cecilia Baravelli. “Since the port of Tripoli cannot be considered a ‘place of safety’ – writes the investigating judge Micaela Raimondo – as also underlined by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees which recently highlighted, in a report, as some thousands of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants in Libya are in arbitrary detention and are subjected to torture and inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of human rights “. The Sea Watch ship, in June 2019, “could not be considered temporarily a safe place” because on board “there were particularly vulnerable people, including pregnant women, six minors including two newborns, migrants with burns from fuel and subjects with suspected tuberculosis “, writes the investigating judge of Agrigento, adding that the port of Tripoli, in Libya,” cannot be considered a pos “that is a safe harbor. The reasons for the filing also focus on the application of the Decree Security Bis, signed by the then Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini, which assumed the violation, by the former commander of Sea-Watch 3, of national and international regulations. The landing of the more than 50 castaways aboard the Sea Watch ship in June 2019 in Lampedusa “was not dangerous”. “It was found that the interministerial measure adopted on June 15, 2019”, that is the security decree signed by Matteo Salvini, “in prohibiting the entry, transit or parking of the boat in the Italian territorial sea – writes the investigating judge – did not reference to specific situations of public order and safety that could have made the landing in Italy of the shipwrecked dangerous “, Therefore, for the Court” there are insufficient elements to believe that the passage of the boat can be defined as ‘not harmless’ “. SEA WATCH – “This umpteenth filing breaks down the specious legislative wall erected by Salvini and, in its motivations, confirms what has already been established by the Court of Cassation: rescuing those in danger at sea and taking them to a safe place is a duty sanctioned by the international law “, comments Sea Watch. OPEN ARMS – “From what we read, the sentence reiterates how a ship cannot be considered a safe place for people rescued from a possible shipwreck and, therefore, in conditions of fragility. This seems to me a fundamental point also for the story that sees the former Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini, accused of kidnapping “, says Veronica Alfonsi, spokesperson for Open Arms Italy. “During the last hearing (of the trial of Salvini in the Open Arms case, ed), the lawyer Bongiorno insisted a lot on this point, trying to pass the idea that the fact of being in territorial waters sheltered near Lampedusa meant that the shipwrecked on board were safe – says Alfonsi now -. A safe harbor, on the other hand, and the law confirms it, is a place where the rights (that of seeking asylum first of all) and care for the people rescued from It is certainly not the bridge of a rescue ship that can guarantee these rights. According to the spokesperson for Open Arms, there is another important point, namely the ban on entry into Italian territorial waters which was then established with the Security Decree. “Here too it is clearly stated that a ship with people in difficulty on board cannot be prevented from landing in an Italian port – he explains -. These are rights guaranteed by international conventions and by our Constitution. In our case this ban was suspended by a ruling from the Lazio TAR. We, like all humanitarian ships, have always acted according to the law and every time the law confirms it “, he concludes.