It was 9 May 2019 when our ship Mare Jonio rescued thirty people, including two pregnant women, a two-year-old girl - little Alima - and several unaccompanied minors, 35 miles north of Zuara, in the SAR zone under Libyan jurisdiction. They were on board a small dinghy, overloaded, with a broken engine and already taking on water.

It could have sunk at any moment, condemning its occupants to certain death. After rescuing the shipwrecked people, our commander and the head of the mission refused to obey the orders of the then Italian government to hand them over to the torturers from whom they were fleeing, the so-called Libyan coastguard.

For this reason, on 10 May, after the disembarkation of the survivors in Lampedusa, our commander and the head of the mission were investigated for the crime of 'aggravated facilitation of illegal immigration' and the ship was seized. Not only that, but Beppe Caccia, in his capacity as owner of the Mare Jonio and head of the mission at the time, was also charged with two breaches of the Navigation Code, for failing to comply with the authorities' "warning" to "carry out search and rescue operations in a planned and organised manner with a vessel that does not have the necessary certificates".

Today, almost a thousand days after the opening of this investigation, the decision has been announced by which the judge for the preliminary investigation of the Court of Agrigento, Dr Micaela Raimondo, accepting the requests of the public prosecutors Dr Salvatore Vella and Dr Cecilia Baravelli, has definitively closed the investigation for the rescue of 9 May 2019, acquitting Commander Massimiliano Napolitano and the Chief of Mission and owner of the Mare Jonio Beppe Caccia of all the charges against them.

Particularly significant are the reasons for the acquittal given by the Court, which writes how first and foremost our people acted ‘in a state of necessity’ and ‘in fulfilment of their duty to rescue, provided for by national and international law’. But it also adds how ‘Libya cannot be considered a place of safety’, a safe haven, given the conditions in which ‘several thousand asylum seekers, migrants and refugees are being arbitrarily detained, subjected to torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of their human rights.’

Finally, with regard to the alleged breaches of the Navigation Code, the GIP Dr Raimondo notes how precisely the inspections carried out by the Coast Guard during the investigation show that the Mare Jonio is "equipped to carry out, if necessary, life-saving operations at sea and that its personnel are adequately trained". But how, exactly, 'Italian law does not provide for SAR certification for civilian vessels carrying out this activity'.

Once again, after a thorough investigation and not on the basis of fanciful and instrumental theories, an Italian court makes an unequivocal decision: saving human lives at sea is not a crime, but an obligation for everyone, civilian and military.

This is what the Mediterranea Saving Humans ship Mare Jonio has just done, rescuing - on the night of 20 January - 214 women, men and children fleeing Libya and in danger of losing their lives in the waters of the central Mediterranean. And we will continue to do so.