ITALY: Opening of Cutro shipwreck trial ― Court orders Italy to pay compensation to people held on coastguard vessel ― Journalists’ union launches legal action against government over spyware hacking ― NGOs condemn ‘illegitimate’ detention centres in A…

• A criminal trial related to the Cutro shipwreck has opened in Crotone.
• Italy has been ordered to pay compensation to a group of people who were prevented from disembarking from an Italian coastguard ship.
• The Italian National Press Federation (FNSI) has launched legal action against the government over the recent spyware scandal.
• A new NGO report has condemned the detention centres in Albania and called for their closure.

A criminal trial related to the Cutro shipwreck has opened in Crotone. Six officers from the Italian coastguard and Financial Police are accused of shipwreck and multiple manslaughter in relation to the Cutro shipwreck which cost the lives of at least 94 people, including 35 minors, off the coast of Calabria in February 2023. Marco Bertotto from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that his organisation would be following the court proceedings closely “to express our solidarity with the survivors and families of the victims, who have the right to truth and justice”. He added that the shipwreck “could have been avoided” and that the victims were “the product of years of Italian and European policies based on rejections, deterrence and criminalisation of migrants, as well as on agreements with third countries”. Describing the shipwreck as “part of a framework of responsibilities much broader than merely individual ones and which concern a political and regulatory approach that hinders those who protect human rights and criminalises migrants”, Serena Chiodo from Amnesty International Italy called for “truth and justice” for the victims and their families. She also called for a change in the Consolidated Law on Immigration “to decriminalise the crime of irregular entry”, a guarantee of “safe and legal routes for those fleeing conflict, persecution and crisis situations” and the removal of “any obstacle to the search and recuse activities of NGOs”. In addition, a group of search and rescue (SAR) NGOs have expressed their willingness to act as a civil party in the trial. “Italian authorities have systematically ignored their duty to rescue, but the deadly cycle of impunity must end now” they said on the opening day of the trial (5 March), adding: “Those in power must no longer be able to evade justice while people drown at sea”.

Italy has been ordered to pay compensation to a group of people who were prevented from disembarking from an Italian coastguard ship. On 7 March, the Supreme Court of Cassation ruled that the 177 people, many of whom were from Eritrea, were entitled to compensation on the grounds that they had been deprived of their personal freedom when they were forced to remain on the Italian coastguard ship Diciotti for 10 days after they were rescued off the coast of Lampedusa in August 2018. The Italian government has reacted angrily to the ruling. Responding to the comments from various senior figures, including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini (who was Minister of the Interior at the time of the incident), First President of the Supreme Court of Cassation Margherita Cassano said: “The decisions of the Court of Cassation, like those of other judges, can be criticised. However, insults that call into question the division of powers on which the rule of law is based are unacceptable”.

Four days after the court ruling, one of the plaintiffs in the case, an Eritrean man who was on board the Dicciotti, said that he had been motivated by a desire for justice. “I wasn’t interested in compensation but in ascertaining the responsibility of those who implemented those decisions” he said, adding: “It was an injustice. They deprived us of our freedom and of the ability to ask for asylum without us having committed any crime”. Commenting on the negative reactions that followed the court ruling, the man’s lawyer, Alessandro Ferrara, said that he felt that the judges had merely “reiterated consolidated principles”. “There is nothing political here, because fundamental rights are safeguarded regardless of citizenship, the colour of skin and social background,” he added.

The Italian National Press Federation (FNSI) has launched legal action against the government over the recent spyware scandal. On 19 February, the FNSI submitted a criminal complaint to prosecutors in Rome after President of the Chamber of Deputies Lorenzo Fontana invoked a rule which allowed the government to refrain from answering questions on its alleged use of spyware to hack mobile phones belonging to journalists, refugee rights activists and other critics on the grounds that all unclassified information had already been shared. FNSI Secretary General Alessandra Costante said: “We want clarity. We want journalists to be able to do their job without the risk of being intercepted”. “We’re dealing with facts that not only violate the criminal code but the constitution itself,” she added. The founder of the SAR NGO Mediterraneanea Saving Humans, Luca Casarini, who was one of the seven people in Italy who received a message from WhatsApp telling them that their phone had been hacked, said: “By refusing to answer the questions in parliament, the government is laying bare its deep difficulties”. “Regardless of which agency deployed this spyware against me, these wiretaps are entirely illegal. There is no doubt that the targets are political opponents of the government,” he added.

A new NGO report has condemned the detention centres in Albania and called for their closure. The report, which was published by the Asylum and Immigration Working Group (TAI), a coalition of NGOs that includes several ECRE member organisations, is based on information gathered during three monitoring missions to the centres in Shëngjin and Gjadër since October 2024. Speaking in a press conference to mark the launch of the report on 25 February, Nazzarena Zorzella from ECRE member organisation the Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI) said: “During our mission, we found that asylum seekers are not adequately informed about the complexity of the procedure to which they are subjected. This lack of information and clarity has the effect of a clear violation of the right to defence, which in turn compromises the right to asylum”.

In addition to contributing to the TAI report, ASGI has also published an analysis of the compatibility of the Italy-Albania Protocol with EU law. The new policy paper identifies several critical issues, including “ineffective screening of ‘vulnerable’ people”, “lack of effective legal information for asylum seekers detained in Albania” and “arbitrary detention of asylum seekers in centres located in Albania” and concludes that the Protocol and its implementation “undermine the application of harmonised rules and obligations under Union law” and harm both the Common European Asylum System and the rights and guarantees that EU member states have to grant to people in need of international protection. It includes ASGI’s recommendation for the European Commission to “act as soon as possible to ensure compliance with EU law” and its rejection of the possibility of transforming the two centres into repatriation centres.

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