Six members of Italy’s police and coastguard were to go on trial yesterday over a 2023 shipwreck that killed at least 94 migrants, accused of failing to intervene on time.
The disaster off the southern Calabrian coast was Italy’s worst in a decade and set off a firestorm of criticism against Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s tough stance on the thousands of migrants who arrive by boat each year from North Africa.
Thirty-five children were among those killed when the boat crashed on the rocks off the coast of the tourist town of Cutro on Feb. 26, 2023. Four officers from Italy’s Guardia di Finanza (GDF) financial crimes police and two members of the coastguard were standing trial in Crotone.
Photo: AFP
They were accused of involuntary manslaughter and “culpable shipwreck,” a crime in the Italian penal code punishing negligent actions or omissions leading to a shipwreck.
The overcrowded boat had set sail from Turkey carrying people from Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Syria. About 80 survived.
Dozens of bodies washed up along the beach, their coffins later filling much of a nearby sports hall — brown wood for the adults, white for the children.
Authorities said more people might have perished in the shipwreck, their bodies never found.
The charges against the officers relate to a search-and-rescue operation that never came, despite the boat having been tracked for hours. A plane from EU border agency Frontex had spotted the vessel in difficulty about 38km off the coast and flagged it to Italian authorities.
A boat subsequently sent by the GDF police turned back due to the bad weather, and the migrant boat eventually capsized on rocks near the beach.
Prosecutors accused the police of having failed to communicate key information to the coast guard, while coast guard members allegedly failed to collect details from police that would have alerted them to the situation’s urgency.
Liborio Cataliotti, a lawyer for defendant Alberto Lippolis from the GDF — who ran the air and naval command center from Calabria’s other coast — said his client is being held responsible for subordinates not having provided more information.
All those on trial worked from various control centers far from the site of the shipwreck.
Charity groups that operate search-and-rescue boats in the Mediterranean, including SOS Humanity and Mediterranea Saving Humans, are civil parties to the case.
The tragedy points to the policy of Meloni’s hard-right government of treating migrant boats as a law enforcement issue rather than a humanitarian one, they said.
Human Rights Watch acting deputy director for Europe and Central Asia Judith Sunderland said it was not only the individual officers on trial, but also “Italian state policies that prioritize deterring and criminalizing asylum seekers and migrants over saving lives.”
Meloni put the onus for the disaster squarely on the shoulders of human traffickers, announcing toughened penalties for those who cause migrant deaths.