On 11 October 2013, 61 miles off the coast of the island of Lampedusa, one of the most tragic shipwrecks in recent Italian history unfolded. The night before, a boat that left Zuwara, Libya, crammed with Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war, was fired upon by one of the many Libyan militias present in those waters. The ship’s hull takes damage and the boat begins taking on water. The people on board call for help with growing desperation and hope that someone will come to their rescue until their very last breath. Although help is promptly requested and despite the presence of an Italian ship not far from them, tragedy strikes: the boat capsizes and sinks, entombing 268 people to the bottom 60 of whom were children.
Over the past few months, the trial – read about the lengthy and complex origin of the proceedings here – which started in July 2019, ended with a statute of limitations ruling. The statute of limitations ruling came, however, with a detailed reconstruction of the defendants’ responsibility, thus also confirming the responsibility of the Italian Coast Guard and Navy in the shipwreck. Below we present our interview with Arturo Salerni, one of the lawyers for the victims who had joined the civil proceedings, to understand how to interpret the ruling and what we can expect in the future.
Mr Salerni, what led to the statute of limitations?
The statute of limitations came about following a complicated and lengthy trial.
The legal case involved two officers, one from the Navy and one from the Coast Guard, respectively under the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. Hence, two bodies of our country being called to trial as civil defenders.
On the one hand, the protracted delay was due to the attitude of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, first in Agrigento and then in Rome, which slowed down the proceedings. As defendant’s or plaintiff’s lawyers, we had to oppose several requests for dismissal. There was a blame-shifting by the GIP (Preliminary Hearing Judge) of Agrigento that pushed the proceedings back to the Rome Prosecutor’s Office. Following the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office’s request for dismissal, the GIP imposed a mandatory indictment that was inaccurately formulated, which led to wasting more time for the Court of Cassation to allow the trial to take place.
The trial was inevitably long also because of the number and of status of the people involved. We spent a great deal of time and energy gathering documents to prove the degree of the relationships between the survivors and those who died as a result of the shipwreck; the survivors are currently spread out across other European countries, so it was also complicated to collect testimonies and arrange appearances at the trial, also due to translation requirements.
Further to this, the case was never simple from a trial perspective either.
The case was never simple in this respect either. Thanks to the help of the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights, we were able to bring the relatives of the victims to Italy and draw their case to the attention of the press and TV. Further to this, we supported them in arranging for proxies that allowed them to appear before the court, and we were crucial in collecting the first statements and bringing them into the proceedings as defence inquiries. Ours was a tremendous effort, made even heavier by the lack of investigative activity on the part of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which perpetuated the idea that there was no Italian responsibility since the shipwreck occurred in the Maltese SAR area and the operations were coordinated by the Maltese at some point.
The Prosecutor’s considerations were not agreed upon by all the judges who dealt with the case, who always identified the Italian authorities as being responsible.
Which authorities? What were the defendants accused of?
They were being accused of refusing to carry out official duties and, as a consequence, of the manslaughter of 300 people. It was necessary to establish liability for the blame-shifting between Italy and Malta, which lasted for several hours and resulted in a lack of action, a total inertia. When action was finally taken the shipwreck had in fact already occurred.
The responsibilities were eventually established by the Court of Rome in its ruling, even in the face of the statute of limitations of the crimes.
First things first, what does the ruling on the merits say about the liability for the shipwreck?
It says that the defendants culpably and repeatedly ignored the rescue request while the international agreements, the law of the sea, required them to intervene.
The defendants argued that there were other merchant ships in the area that could have intervened since Italy had reported the situation to the Maltese authorities.
But if we reconstruct a timeline of the whole episode, as we did during the trial, it becomes clear that considerable time was lost and that a timely intervention by the Italian Navy ship Libra – close to the location of the shipwreck because it was on a surveillance mission, but whose presence was concealed from those who were supposed to coordinate search and rescue operations – could have saved those people. The ship was in fact an hour away but did not move until the boat capsized at 5 pm. When it reached the scene of the shipwreck an hour later, it was too late to save the lives of many of those at sea. Leaving earlier, when the rescue call was made or even during the time that followed, would have been sufficient to avoid this level of tragedy.
In addition to having been approved by the Court now, this reconstruction was also endorsed by a ruling of the UN Human Rights Committee that condemned Italy for its failure to intervene.
How then does the statute of limitations apply to such serious charges?
With regard to manslaughter, while penalties are quite high in the case of multiple deaths, the statute of limitations is calculated based on the maximum penalty for each individual offence. This means that even if the alleged offence involved the death of 300 people, the statute of limitations is set at seven and a half years – to which suspension periods were added, such as those due to the Covid emergency and other postponements due to impediments made by defendants and defence lawyers. Therefore, also because of the difficulty of conducting this trial, much time passed and the offences expired as a result of the statute of limitations. Nevertheless, in his motivations, the Judge fully reconstructed the case and, despite the positions taken by the Avvocatura dello Stato (Legal Council of State) and the defence lawyers – who were asking for an acquittal and a declaration of the absence of responsibility of the defendants and the State administrations – stressed the responsibility of the defendants.
In fact, both the Avvocatura dello Stato and the defendants’ lawyers also appealed against the judgement in order to avoid consequences in civil proceedings.
What could happen in civil proceedings?
They will ask that liability be declared and that the defendants, as well as the ministries, compensate the victims financially. The judgement filed at the end of the first-instance proceedings is essentially a very precise accusation against the Italian State and the defendants. It establishes a huge, tragic, dramatic responsibility that led to the deaths of a great many people, which will certainly be significant in the civil proceedings. This is why the defence lawyers, although the statute of limitations applies, are relying on the appeal trial to claim a lack of responsibility and therefore an acquittal on the merits.
If we look at what is happening in Italy these days, what significance can this process have?
Huge importance. It opens up the question of what it means to have no rescuers in these scenarios. In this case there is a culpable failure to intervene, but in many other instances there is the impossibility of intervention, because – due to precise political choices – rescue ships are not made available. The choice of distancing the rescuers’ ships from the places where shipwrecks most frequently occur – as is being done both with the Piantedosi decree, which I believe should be rightly called the ‘Herod decree’, and with the decision to appoint ports far from the intervention areas – makes the presence of rescuers even more scarce, which is exactly the opposite of what is needed.
The tragedy that occurred off the coast of Calabria in recent days reminds us that not rescuing increases the likelihood of tragedies. It is no coincidence that right after the shipwreck on 11 October 2013 and the one in Lampedusa eight days earlier, the government of the time – and the European Commission – decided to launch the ‘Mare Nostrum’ mission. Moreover, the attempt to pass the buck by both the Italian authorities and Frontex proves how trials of this kind can help bring to light individual responsibilities in the absence and delay of rescue operations, which – should there be any – must be brought to light, calling those guilty of these omissions to account without hiding behind political choices or recommendations.
Cover photo: frame adapted from Fabrizio Gatti’s work “Un unico destino“.
