Faced with government attempts to prevent the activities of the ship MARE JONIO, Mediterranea Saving Humans is going on the legal offensive: in fact, two appeals were filed on Friday 1st November radically contesting the measures taken in recent months by the Authorities against the only Italian-flagged ship in the civilian rescue fleet in the central Mediterranean.
In the appeal filed by lawyers Lucia Gennari, Cristina Laura Cecchini and Giulia Crescini with the Civil Court of Agrigento against the Ministries of Transport, the Interior and the Economy and Finance, an urgent request is made for the annulment of the measures with which the vessel was sanctioned and orderedadministratively detained for 20 days on October 15th after the MARE JONIO had rescued, in international waters Sar zone under Tunisian competence, 58 people in distress, who were then disembarked safely in Porto Empedocle (Sicily) after refusing the "far port" of Neaples.
The appeal to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, filed by lawyers Enrico Mordiglia and Andrea Mozzati, also calls for the annulment of all the measures that justified, in an instrumental and specious manner, the Maritime Authorities' denial of the certification of the MARE JONIO as a "rescue ship" and the illegitimate order to disembark "rescue equipment," despite the fact that the ship is instead fully certified for SAR search and rescue at sea by the competent technical body, namely the Italian Naval Register (RINA).
"For the first time," emphasizes Laura Marmorale, Mediterranea's president, "we are raising the issue of the constitutionality of the Piantedosi Decree Law: not only is it paradoxical and unacceptable to state that the rescue of lives in danger at sea must be 'authorized' in advance by the ship's flag State, but in this continued administrative persecution against our ship our lawyers rightly see an authoritarian attack on the constitutional rights of our Association and our legitimate humanitarian activity. An attack that is part of a more general government offensive against personal and collective freedoms, as unfortunately witnessed by the recent Security and Flow Decrees and the attempt to reintroduce deportations from the sea to Albania. But we don't stand for it, and on these violations we demand that the courts rule, willing to go all the way to the Constitutional Court and the European courts."
