Mar 19, 2024
Activists aboard the Iuventa rescue ship saved the lives of over 14,000 people in the central Mediterranean between 2016 and 2017.
Based on dodgy allegations from a security guard with links to the far right, the Italian secret services began spying on the Iuventa crew in September 2016.
The Italian authorities seized the Iuventa in August 2017, and initially warned 10 members of the crew that they were under investigation for human smuggling.
But in March 2021, only four of them were charged with “aiding and abetting illegal immigration to Italy.”
The four are Kathrin Schmidt, Dariush Beigui, Sascha Girke and Uli Tröder.
The preliminary hearing began in May 2022, and has been marred by the prosecution’s many procedural errors and a lack of proper translation for the German defendants.
At the end of February 2024, Ben Cowles went to Trapani, on the Italian island of Sicily, to cover what was hoped to be the end of the pretrial.
In this episode we interview Dariush and Sascha, two of the Iuventa four, on the day the prosecution gave up.
We speak with Elisa De Pieri from Amnesty International, Allison West from ECCHR, former Iuventa crewmate and Die Linke Party candidate Lea Reisner, and Mediterranea: Saving Humans' head of operations Beppe Caccia.
We also hear from the Iuventa's lawyers Nicola Canestrini and Francesca Cancellaro about the absurdity of the charges brought against the activists.
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---Show Notes---
Check out The Civil Fleet's previous episodes with
Iuventa crew members:
• Episode 2 with Sascha Girke
• Episode 24 with Kathrin Schmidt
• Episode 36 with one of their lawyers Francesca Cancellaro
Read all about the Iuventa on The Civil Fleet blog, here: thecivilfleet.wordpress.com/tag/Iuventa
Read about Italy's top court declaring Libya not to be a safe port: reuters.com/world/africa/returning-sea-migrants-libya-is-illegal-italys-top-court-says-2024-02-18/
You can read the full European Ombudsman's findings on Frontex's operations, here: ombudsman.europa.eu/en/case/en/63451
Or you can read a news story about it, here: euractiv.com/section/politics/news/eu-ombudsman-slams-frontexs-dependence-on-eu-countries-for-sea-operations/
For more on the ECCHR, listen to episode 15 of The Civil Fleet Podcast with Silvia Rojas-Castro, a legal advisor at the ECCHR, and Elise Flecher, a senior programmes officer at Lawyers for Justice in Libya
Allison mentions UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Defenders Mary Lawler. You can read about her intervention in the Iuventa case, here: https://iuventa-crew.org/en/2023/05/03/un-special-rapporteurs-call-on-italian-prosecution-to-dismiss-iuventa-case/
And on The Civil Fleet, here: thecivilfleet.wordpress.com/2020/10/08/un-expert-condemns-criminalisation-of-ngo-rescuers/
You can read the latest ECCHR report on the Iuventa pretrial, here:
https://www.ecchr.eu/en/press-release/nach-7-jahren-staatsanwaltschaft-fordert-einstellung-des-verfahrens-im-iuventa-prozess/
A few times in the episode, Ben mentions a man, Ibrahima Bah, who was prosecuted in the UK for driving a boat across the Chanel. You can read about him in the Guardian newspaper, here: theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/12/ibrahima-bah-teenage-asylum-seeker-manslaughter
Read Ben's written interview with Lea Reisner on The Civil Fleet, here: https://thecivilfleet.wordpress.com/2020/09/18/this-would-not-have-happened-if-the-people-we-found-were-white/
Read about former Frontex boss Fabrice Leggeri joining the far right in France: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/former-eu-border-agency-chief-joins-french-far-right-rn-party-2024-02-18/
Read about UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak joining a protest organised by a climate conspiracy group last month: theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/25/sunak-stands-with-net-zero-and-climate-conspiracy-group-at-farming-protest
For more on Mediterranea: Saving Humans and the Maersk Etienne, check out episodes 18 and 47 of The Civil Fleet Podcast
Read about the Maersk Etienne, here: https://thecivilfleet.wordpress.com/?s=Etienne