The captain of an Italian ship had rescued migrants and then brought them back to Libya, an illegal act for which he is now on trial - a first in Italy.
Austria's Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) has warned the European Union against admitting migrants at the Turkish-Greek border. Other European leaders have sounded a similar warning.
Convicted in 2013 to ten years in prison, before his sentence was reduced to five years imprisonment on appeal in November 2016, Jean-Louis Denis, known as “the submissive”, was released in early 2019.
Because the Balkan route could largely be closed after the intervention by the then Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz in 2017, the influx of immigrants has been accumulating on the Croatian EU external border.