This is how the NGO Mediterranea challenges judges and right-wing newspapers

The right is rejoicing over the referral to trial of Luca Casarini and other militants of the NGO Mediterranea , decided the other evening by a judge in Syracuse, despite the Prosecutor's Office having requested the referral. One might wonder why he had requested the referral. But the answer is clear: the Prosecutors had realized, at the end of the preliminary investigations, that there was no trace of a crime and therefore proposed to wait for the pronouncement of the European Court which is about to issue a sentence on a similar case.

A major Northern newspaper even ran a front-page headline, in giant letters: “ Casarini profited from illegal immigrants.” Of course, that’s not true. Not only is it not true that Luca profited (everyone can understand this, even those in bad faith) but it’s not true that he was sent to trial on this defamatory charge. Casarini has announced he will file a complaint. It will be difficult, very difficult to find a magistrate who doesn’t agree with him. Luca has asked for a specific amount of compensation: one million. It’s the amount of money needed to buy a new ship that will give more strength to the sea rescue patrol, decimated by the various decrees passed first by the center-left and then embittered, with a sadistic and efficient spirit, by the laws of the center-right.

If the judges accept Casarini's request, Mediterranea Saving Humans will have three ships. The old Mare Jonio , that is, the ship " sent to trial " accused of having saved 27 shipwrecked people, plus a new ship that was launched just yesterday, and was the best response to the decision of the Ragusa judge, and finally this new vessel for which a name will have to be found that honors the involuntary financiers... Beyond the propaganda researchers pro Piantedosi - or pro Salvini, or Meloni, I don't know - the issue of the referral to trial is very serious, because the magistrate who decided to start the trial affirmed a terrible principle. That according to which saving shipwrecked people is, or in any case can be a crime. And drowning shipwrecked people, or in any case abandoning them adrift without help, is not a crime.

Let's leave aside the general reasoning for a moment. Let's focus only on the single case we are talking about. This is how things went. A gigantic Danish merchant ship found a small boat of refugees that was sinking in the middle of the sea. It pulled 27 people aboard, saving them from certain death. Let's write these words twice, so we don't forget them: CERTAIN DEATH. Due to the lack of help in the Mediterranean, desired and stubbornly pursued by several Italian and European governments. The Danish merchant ship called Maersk Etienne immediately raised the alarm and asked the authorities to move some patrol boats to bring the shipwrecked people back to land. The Italian authorities didn't care. They abandoned the shipwrecked people to their fate for 38 days, people who had escaped from Libyan torturers. And by then they were exhausted: physically and mentally. A woman on board had managed to escape after being raped by Tripoli guards.

After 38 days, the Mar Jonio approached the merchant ship, loaded the shipwrecked people and took them to Sicily where they disembarked safe and sound. A few months later, the company that manages the merchant ship, as it does every year, chose the European crew to reward for their conduct at sea. And, perhaps for objective reasons, perhaps to highlight the problem, it chose Ocean Viking . To highlight what problem? The lack of an adequate rescue network in the Mediterranean where not hundreds but several thousand people die every year . This is where the legal action began. The prosecutor who investigated was convinced (at first) that the cash prize granted by the Danish company was a bribe. Of course, no one ever even imagined that it was a bribe for Casarini. The prize, like many other voluntary donations, is part of the voluntary funding to NGOs. That is, it is the fruit of a consciousness of sectors, albeit small, of European entrepreneurship that, in the absence of action by the States, provide (together with other humanitarian and religious organizations, including the Vatican) to finance a small fleet of volunteers who in turn make available their time and effort to make up for the shortcomings of the State. And sometimes they risk their lives.

Now what is surprising is not only the referral to trial of Casarini and seven other people from the NGO Mediterranea. It is also the lack of legal action against the authorities who had decided to abandon them at sea for 38 days (and who knows how many more there would have been if the Mar Jonio had not intervened) for reasons, it seems quite clear to me, of political propaganda. The 27 shipwrecked people, exhausted, had not been stopped in port, but abandoned on the high seas. It is difficult not to see at least the hypothesis of failure to rescue. In this affair there are very clearly guilty and innocent people. The guilty are the state authorities, including the government. The innocent are the rescuers.

After all, you know very well that the judiciary, accused by the current government of being biasedly on the side of migrants and against the Italian state, has in reality almost never investigated the thousands of murders that occurred at sea due to the lack of rescue intervention . Or even due to actions that disturb rescue operations. Such as those carried out through the diversion measures of NGO ships. Which are continuous and systematic. Every time an NGO ship saves people, it is then forced to sail for days and days to reach the ports of Northern Italy, instead of disembarking the refugees in Sicily or Calabria. What is the reason for these provisions by the Italian authorities? Only one: to put rescue ships out of action for as long as possible, in order to prevent them from carrying out new rescues. This is the policy of so-called pushbacks. Salvini calls it “defense of the borders,” besieged by thousands of two- or three-year-old children with their parents. The reasoning is explicit and declared: if many drown, many will be afraid to leave.

Laura Marmorale , young president of Mediterranea Saving Humans, yesterday summarized the judicial situation of the NGOs: in 2024 alone there were 142 people under investigation and of these 88 are members of the rescue ships. We need to understand the value of these numbers: we are not faced with a single and isolated symbolic judicial action against Luca Casarini, who has long been targeted by the press and the secret services , sometimes with separate actions sometimes with joint actions, but we are faced with a well-organized initiative that is also conducted by a significant part of the judiciary. Yesterday Laura Marmorale concluded her statement with six reasonable words: " First we save, then we discuss." Indeed. Instead, the line of the government and some magistrates is different: "First we drown and then we prosecute those who try to save." The sleep of reason produces monsters. And sometimes the opposite also happens: that monsters push reason to sleep.

FROM

Piero Sansonetti