Trapani judge Samuele Corso must rule whether or not to proceed to trial after a five-year investigation mired in controversy
\n ROME
\nCharities running migrant rescue ships in the Mediterranean faced a pre-trial hearing in Sicily Saturday over alleged collusion with people traffickers after a controversial probe that involved mass wiretapping.
\nTwenty-one suspects, including crew members of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Save the Children and German NGO Jugend Rettet rescue ships, are accused of \u201caiding and abetting unauthorized entry into Italy\u201d in 2016 and 2017.
\n\u201cOur crews rescued over 14,000 people in distress from unseaworthy and overcrowded boats… and are now facing 20 years in prison,\u201d Kathrin Schmidt, who sailed with Jugend Rettet\u2019s ship Iuventa, said ahead of the hearing.
\nTrapani judge Samuele Corso must rule whether or not to proceed to trial after a five-year investigation mired in controversy for the mass wiretapping of charity workers, lawyers and journalists in what critics say is a politically motivated bid to stop sea rescues.
\nItaly has long been on the front line of seaborne migration from Africa to Europe, with a record 180,000 arrivals in 2016, dropping to 120,000 in 2017.
\nIt has registered some 17,000 arrivals so far this year, according to the interior ministry.
\nProsecutor Brunella Sardoni told AFP she expected the preliminary hearings process to last \u201cseveral months, considering the complexity\u201d of a case file with some 30,000 pages and hundreds of CDs.
\nCorso set the date for the next hearing as June 7.
\nSupporters of the rescue charities held a sit-in at the port in Trapani featuring large paper boats bearing the date and location of shipwrecks, and the number of victims.
\nThe charities are accused of coordinating their actions with smugglers just off Libya, returning inflatable dinghies and boats to them to be reused, and picking up people whose lives had not been in danger.
\nThe rescuers say anyone attempting the central Mediterranean crossing to Europe \u2014 the \u201cworld\u2019s deadliest\u201d according to the UN \u2014 on rickety boats or unseaworthy dinghies is at risk, and should be saved.
\nAt least 12,000 people have drowned on this route since 2014. Many shipwrecks go unrecorded.
\nThe charities also deny ever communicating with smugglers, who are sometimes armed and can be spotted loitering near rescues in the hope of retrieving valuable engines from migrant boats.
\nSave the Children told AFP it \u201cstrongly rejects\u201d the accusations, as did MSF, which slammed a \u201cperiod of criminalization of humanitarian aid\u201d it hoped would soon end.
\nThe Iuventa was impounded in 2017 shortly after Jugend Rettet and others refused to sign a new and contentious interior ministry \u201ccode of conduct\u201d accord, and as the European Union scaled up surveillance and policing in the Mediterranean.
\n\u201cDespite the fact that mobile phones and computers were seized and analyzed, not a single contact with Libyan smugglers… has been found,\u201d said Nicola Canestrini, lawyer for the Iuventa crew members.
\nPre-trial hearings are held behind closed doors, but representatives from the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and Amnesty International have requested the judge allow them to sit in for transparency.
\nECCHR senior legal adviser Allison West has condemned \u201cimproper investigative practices\u201d in the investigation, led by a prosecutors\u2019 office more used to exposing Mafia crimes.
\nThe probe was launched after ex-policeman Pietro Gallo, working as a security contractor on Save the Children\u2019s Vos Hestia ship, sent allegations against the charities in October 2016 to Italy\u2019s secret services, Canestrini told AFP.
\nHe and a fellow ex-policeman also sent them to the head of the anti-immigration League party, Matteo Salvini, before reporting their suspicions to the police.
\nGallo has since said in an interview that he regrets it. Asked if he ever saw any contact between the charities and traffickers, he replied \u201cno, never.\u201d
\nThe damage was done. Police placed an undercover agent on the Vos Hestia in May 2017, who would provide information including elements used to charge the four Iuventa crew members, Canestrini said. Those included alleged hand signals between the crew and smugglers.
\nIuventa\u2019s case has been studied by Forensic Architecture, an agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, which uses advanced reconstruction techniques to investigate police, military and state facts.
\nIt discredited the police theories for all three Iuventa rescues in question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trapani judge Samuele Corso must rule whether or not to proceed to trial after a five-year investigation mired in controversy ROME Charities running migrant rescue ships in the Mediterranean faced a pre-trial hearing in Sicily Saturday over alleged collusion with people traffickers after a controversial probe that involved mass wiretapping. Twenty-one suspects, including crew members […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-261852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n