Our comment after the admissions of the Undersecretary of the Meloni government before Copasir

We have learned from journalistic sources that, at last, Undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano, delegated by the government, has admitted that Mediterranea and its activists were spied on by the secret services with the military software Paragon Graphite because they were considered a ‘danger to national security’. The spying was requested by the Meloni government and authorised by the Attorney General at the Court of Appeal in Rome, Dr Amato.

First consideration: we caught them red-handed. This ‘legal’ but illegitimate activity targeting activists and political opponents of the government in their plans should not have come to light. Instead, the devil makes pots and pans but not lids: a covert operation worthy of a regime has been exposed worldwide.

Second consideration: for this government, a criminal of the calibre of militia leader Almasri, who escaped arrest and was brought back home, to Libya, on a state flight, is a ‘national asset’. A criminal who has killed, raped, tortured innocent people, including children, and who can continue to enrich himself with his trafficking (migrants, drugs, oil, arms) thanks to the impunity he enjoys and the excellent protections: the very foreign secret service Aisel, which spies on us, takes care of relations in Libya with these criminals. So: those who do their best to save lives, to help women, men and children imprisoned in camps or abandoned in the middle of the sea, are a ‘danger to national security’ for this government, while those who kill innocent people and accumulate millions of euro through criminal deals, are under protection. This reality of the facts is revealed before the eyes of the world, and there is no longer anything secret about it.

Third consideration: this is not the end of the story. Undersecretary Mantovano is the ‘mind’ that inspired and guided the espionage activities against us. He attempts to cover himself through the alibi of the ‘law’. But to authorise such activity without violating the Constitution there must be ‘well-founded reasons’. Five public prosecutors' offices are investigating, and we trust that someone will have the courage to go all the way and prove, as is evident, that this is an abuse of power, not anything else.

Fourth consideration: we are convinced that there was no need to use this military software to spy on us: on the one hand, we have been subjected to every type of control for as long as we have existed, including through the use of environmental and telephone interceptions, tailing, and so on. All this is part of the judicial investigations conducted against us over the years, which we have never shirked, and which have always demonstrated our absolute extraneousness to the crime we are always accused of: the notorious ‘aiding and abetting illegal immigration’. So what were the secret services, and the Aise in particular, looking for through espionage? Perhaps the names and surnames of refugees who are potential witnesses at the International Criminal Court, of the crimes committed by the militia leaders in Libya, with whom the government collaborates? Who was the information from our phones supposed to reach? To the various Almasri, Trebelsi, Al Kikli? The difference between the interceptions ordered by some prosecutors and these, defined as preventive and unusable in trials, is that these are materials that are only useful for building dossiers, files, etc. and therefore also ‘exchangeable’ with their criminal partners in exchange for perhaps something else.

After two months, therefore, the ‘state secret’ has miserably collapsed. We know that these gentlemen have a lot of power in their hands, we know that this is a message of intimidation for so many migrants and refugees, for us and our families. We know that the Libyan mafia is present in our country and can reach us at any time to do us harm. But they too, Undersecretary Mantovano first, must know that they will not win.

We will not retreat to private life, we will continue to try to save the lives of the last of the earth, those who are considered the rejects of humanity, those who set out with the hope of finding a possible and dignified life, and instead are rejected by the criminal policies of the border regime. For us, they are not discards, but cornerstones from which to build a new, fairer world for all. A world where the Mediterranean is no longer a horrendous mass grave but a sea of peace and solidarity between the peoples who inhabit it. Courage does not lie in not being afraid, but in overcoming fear. All of us together.