Trapani: Seven Years of Scandalous Investigations into the Iuventa Ship Conclude with Nothing

 In a Trapani courtroom that resembled an absurd theater, a saga that cost three million euros, seven years of time, fifty thousand hours of phone and environmental interceptions, and left a rescue ship rotting in port, has finally come to an end. The trial, with the crew and owners of the humanitarian ship Iuventa among the main defendants, has concluded.

In reality, even calling it a "trial" is technically wrong. The proceedings were still in the preliminary hearing phase. The judge, therefore, had to rule on the prosecution's request for indictment, in what had been called "the mother of all NGO investigations." A record-breaking seven years – in the theater of the absurd, after all – and about forty hearings (or more correctly, hearing sessions) to reach the following conclusion: it was the Trapani Prosecutor's Office itself that requested the case to be archived, and the judge of the preliminary hearings agreed. Everything was over before it even began.

The case was followed by media around the world. Not a single hearing day went by without Amnesty International representatives, Save The Children volunteers in front of the courthouse, and foreign media from Germany or France. The accusation was sensational, as for the first time, the crew of an NGO ship, the famous "sea taxis" (copyright Luigi Di Maio) had been caught: not saving shipwrecked people, but making deals with Libyan traffickers to have migrants delivered directly to them.

To reach this initial conclusion, the Trapani Prosecutor's Office had deployed the best investigative tools available: satellite interceptions, geolocation of the suspects in the Mediterranean, agents infiltrated among the volunteers. In their enthusiasm for uncovering the scam of the century, they also intercepted journalists and lawyers (even there, a few embarrassing apologies in Italy, a major scandal instead in the foreign media).

It was 2017. The Italian Prime Minister was Gentiloni, the Interior Minister Minniti. In February, Italy had signed an agreement with Libya that raised many eyebrows: it provided funding and means to the Libyan Coast Guard to prevent migrant departures and patrol the sea (the memorandum was renewed in 2022). The Iuventa ship had been put to sea by a small association of young people from Berlin, Jugend Rettet ("Youth to the Rescue" in Italian), who had raised money through self-assessment to finance its purchase and then its patrol of the Mediterranean to save lives. The ship was seized and is now rotting in the port of Trapani, under the custody (on paper) of the Port Authority. Activists from Médecins Sans Frontières and Save The Children were also investigated. Twenty-one people in all. The charge: aiding and abetting illegal immigration. For Matteo Salvini, then Interior Minister, it was "proof of the collusion of humanitarian organizations with human traffickers."

The prosecutors' theory was as follows: the rescuers and NGOs were part of a criminal scheme to favor illegal immigration into Italy thanks to a "pre-existing agreement" with Libyan traffickers that involved "agreed deliveries" of migrants. What was the motive? To increase private donations to NGOs. The defendants, based on this accusatory framework, risked up to 20 years in prison.

In the end, it took Judge Samuele Corso only fifteen minutes to read the dismissal order to close seven years of investigations. They were not acquitted. Worse: the crime simply did not exist. The charges were not proven and could not be proven.

The investigation immediately showed some glaring flaws. It all stemmed from unspecified "confidences" made to the secret services by the private security (the Imi security service) of a ship chartered by Save the Children. The magistrates were convinced that they had documented at least three cases of "contact", with the ships intervening to rescue the refugees without them actually being in danger, but who, on the contrary, had been transferred from Libyan boats, with the smugglers then leaving undisturbed.

In 2017, the Trapani prosecutors spoke of "serious evidence". In 2024, their colleagues, requesting the filing of the case, were the first to contradict them. In the meantime, some sensational facts were ascertained. The key witnesses for the prosecution, for example, were unreliable, as they had even been fired from the police for a series of serious negligences. The two "informers" instead, Pietro Gallo and Floriana Ballestra, former officers who had entered the private security business, had sent the dossier to the secret services to Matteo Salvini, then in the opposition. A strange triangulation. Ballestra had even met with Salvini, hoping for a political appointment, while Pietro Gallo was in contact with his staff.