The Public Prosecutor's Office in Trapani has formally requested the indictment of 21 people and 3 different organisations for 'aiding and abetting illegal immigration'.

All charges relate to sea rescues carried out between 2016 and 2017.

This is a political declaration of intent to criminalise solidarity, with deadly consequences: people die when they could be rescued.

The story

As the European Union turned the Mediterranean into the world's deadliest border, the rescue ship Iuventa, operated by a joint effort of more than 200 volunteers at sea and supported by thousands on land, began search and rescue operations in the central Mediterranean in July 2016. Their rescue operations were forcibly halted when the ship was seized by prosecutors on 2 August 2017 and ten people were placed under investigation.

More than three years after the rescue ship Iuventa was seized by the Italian authorities, the prosecutor in Trapani has declared the investigation against the crew of the Iuventa closed. The crew, accused of 'aiding and abetting illegal immigration', face up to 20 years in prison. But the legal battle is far from over.

The legal case

This day marks the start of the trial of the crew of the Iuventa, despite the fact that the initial accusations have already been publicly proven to be unfounded. The main so-called 'eyewitness' who gathered evidence against the Iuventa crew publicly recanted his testimony. He then told the press that he had been promised a job in Italy's right-wing Northern League party in exchange for his testimony. In addition, the authoritative research team 'Forensic Architecture' refuted the prosecution's case in a detailed public reconstruction of Iuventa's operations.

Francesca Cancellaro, the group's defence lawyer, said: Saving lives is never a crime. We will prove that all the operations carried out by the crew of the Iuventa were perfectly legal. While the European Union was withdrawing from the Mediterranean and turning it into a mass grave for Europe's undesirables, the crew of the Iuventa went to sea on a voluntary basis to defend the fundamental right to life and to seek asylum, as required by international law and, before that, by human solidarity'.

The crew

As the European Union turned its back on the Mediterranean, paying militias to take people back to their abusive places and turning the Mediterranean into a mass grave for Europe's undesirables, the crew of the Iuventa set out to sea as volunteers, moved by an impulse of solidarity.

Dariush, captain of the Iuventa, explains: As long as governments violate their own laws, international conventions and maritime law, all accusations are a joke to me. They would make people laugh, too, if this joke did not mean death, fear and misery for people on the move'.

Sascha Girke, the former head of mission on board the Iuventa, says: 'Even if we are accused, it is we who are accusing the European authorities of refusing to open safe channels and letting people drown.

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