On Friday, January 31st, Meta, the company that owns the Whatsapp messaging service, sent an official message to Luca Casarini, Head of Mission and one of the founders of Mediterranea, informing him that his phone had been hacked by a high-level "spyware" operation, using software defined as "one of the most sophisticated in the world".

Meta advised people to change their cell phones immediately and to contact their advisors, 'The Citizen Lab', a research team based at the University of Toronto.

Almost simultaneously, international newspapers and news agencies broke the news of the breach of Whatsapp's security systems, which affected 90 "targets" worldwide, mainly civil society activists and journalists.

The software used to carry out the spyware infiltration is called 'Paragon' and was developed by the Israeli company 'Paragon Solution', which claimed to have provided it 'to the US government and other government intelligence agencies of allied countries'.

Experts at The Citizen Lab are conducting extensive research on Luca's phone, and in the coming days it will be possible to find out how long this operation has been going on. They will also be able to determine what he was up to when he was collecting messages, contacts, and audio, video, and photographic material.

We are already aware of other cases in Italy and abroad involving human rights defenders, activists and investigative journalists. We also know that, as far as Luca and others are concerned, the activities of rescue at sea and assistance to people imprisoned in Libyan camps or deported to the desert are the focus of attention of the Italian secret services, in particular the AISE, which operates in Libya and Tunisia.

We will certainly know more at the end of the civil investigations that we are carrying out with the help of specialized teams.

Some questions arise: did the Italian government authorize such an operation? do the Italian secret services use Paragon software?

Meanwhile, to those who think they can frighten us with the message that in the name of "reason of state" everything is permitted, we respond with the serenity of those who have nothing to hide: we try in every way to save lives, unlike those who instead leave thousands of people to die at sea or in the desert. We have nothing to do with torturers and traffickers, unlike those who protect them from international arrest warrants for crimes against humanity. We disobey the state of fear, the violation of human rights, the cruelty towards the weakest, in order to be "leaven of hope and seed of a new world" founded on solidarity and human fraternity.

We will also use this umpteenth trial to learn to organize ourselves better and to continue, together with the last of the world, on the path of the "conspiracy of good".

Solidarity with Luca and all the people who are the target of the morbid attentions of those who think they are powerful and put on a ferocious face, but then run away when confronted with the truth.