On July 30, 2018, the vessel Asso 28, flying the Italian flag, and its captain rescued no less than 101 migrants in distress aboard a lifeboat drifting in the international waters of the Mediterranean, according to reports in the Italian media.
A trial will open in Italy at the start of the school year to try the captain of the Asso 28, as well as a representative of the company that owns the ship, Augusta Offshore, as documents seen by news agency AFP revealed.
According to the Naples prosecutor’s office, the latter brought the migrants back to the port of Tripoli and handed them over to the Libyan coast guard. International laws do not authorize the return of people to countries where their rights are threatened, because Tripoli is currently not considered a safe port.
The Naples public prosecutor’s office also accused the defendants of not having contacted the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC), as required by the procedure, and of not having respected international conventions.
These provide for rescued migrants to be identified, their state of health checked and their asylum requests taken into account if necessary.
Nicola Fratoianni, deputy and leader of the Italian Left Party who was on board the NGO vessel Open Arms at the time as an observer, told AFP the Open Arms had warned the crew of the Asso 28 that returning the migrants to Libya “was illegal”. Fratoianni said it was “an explicit collective pushback on the part of a ship flying the Italian flag”.
However, migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean are regularly picked up by Libyan authorities and returned to Libya. NGOs have complained that they are often shadowed by Libyan coast guards who take the migrants back if they pick them up first.
