MSF: *Charges in case against rescues at sea dropped in Italy*
🔗 https://www.msf.org/charges-case-against-rescues-sea-dropped-italy
"After seven years of false accusations, defamatory statements, and a blatant criminalisation campaign towards organisations performing search and rescue operations at sea, the investigation launched by the prosecutor’s office in Trapani, Sicily, Italy, in late 2016, was dismissed today.
The case saw Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and other organisations conducting search and rescue activities, investigated on the unfounded charge of aiding and abetting ‘illegal immigration’. It involved a mammoth indictment based on inferences, wiretaps, false statements, and an interpretation of rescue mechanisms that was deliberately distorted to present them as criminal acts.
However, after a two-year preliminary hearing, the same prosecutor’s office that opened the investigation acknowledged that the evidence showed that the NGOs were working with the sole intention of saving lives, and asked that the case not continue to trial. The judge has now definitively closed the case, citing the baselessness of the accusations and erasing any suspicion of collaboration with smugglers. …"
#migration #refugees #RefugeesLivesMatter #RefugeesWelcome #MSF #MédecinsSansFrontières #HumanRights #Mediterranean #Italy