Ahmad 
Italy’s Supreme Court has issued a categorical ruling condemning the handover of refugees and migrants rescued in the Mediterranean to the Libyan Coast Guard, finding that Libya is not a safe country to house migrants.
According to the Italian news agency ANSA, this decision is a final conviction of the captain of the Italian private ship Aso 28, which rescued more than 100 migrants in 2018 and handed them over to the Libyan coast guard.
The Supreme Court judges considered that facilitating the interception of migrants and refugees by the Libyan Coast Guard constituted the crime of “abandoning in a state of danger minors or incapacitated persons and arbitrarily disembarking and abandoning persons.”
The decision comes in a similar context to the call of four Maltese organizations last December, calling on their country’s authorities to cease all forms of cooperation with the Tariq bin Ziyad Brigade and any other Libyan militia involved in human trafficking and abuse.