The Agrigento Court has issued a decree suspending the administrative detention of the ship Mediterranea, which had been imposed by the Prefecture of the Sicilian city on November 12th. It had been an exceptionally severe measure: 60 days of administrative detention of the vessel and a financial penalty of 10,000 euros for both the captain and the shipowner.

The Agrigento Court’s decision demonstrates the illegitimacy of the application of the Piantedosi Decree-Law, doing so inaudita altera parte, that is, through an urgent measure without even deeming necessary a preliminary hearing with the State Attorney’s Office. The government’s harsh retaliation against the Mediterranea fell after the rescue — between November 2nd and 3rd in three separate operations in the SAR zone under Libyan control and south of Lampedusa — of 92 people, including as many as 31 unaccompanied minors. The accusation from the Ministry of the Interior was that Mediterranea had refused to proceed on its journey for four days toward the distant port of Livorno. In reality, the disembarkation of all the rescued people at the Sicilian port of Porto Empedocle took place on November 4th by order of the Prosecutor’s Office at the Juvenile Court of Palermo and the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Agrigento.

Today’s decision by the Agrigento Court reveals the existence of a deliberate government strategy: the repeated, arbitrary, and even unlawful abuse of the sanctioning powers provided for by the Piantedosi Decree-Law aims to obstruct and prevent civil rescue operations in the central Mediterranean. In our specific case, the abuse is even more dangerous: by violating every rule, they intend to achieve the definitive confiscation of the ship. Along with the economic stranglehold represented by the exceptional costs incurred during each detention, they want to eliminate inconvenient witnesses who continuously denounce the violations of migrants’ rights and the systematic destruction at sea of international, maritime, and humanitarian law.

Yet each time Piantedosi’s measures are subjected to judicial review by an independent and competent judge, they are strikingly overturned and annulled. Solidarity and the defense of fundamental rights—starting with the right to protection and asylum, currently under attack from the United States to Europe—can make a difference. For this reason, we await with confidence the substantive rulings on the unlawful detentions of our ship, which will be addressed in the upcoming hearings on December 17th at the Trapani Court and on January 21st at the Agrigento Court.

Our aim is for the Piantedosi Decree-Law, like all regulations that trample on human rights, to be abolished. And that every abuse of power against human life and the solidarity that seeks to save it be exposed and sanctioned