The charges against crew members of Save the Children, MSF and Jugend Rettet, had no basis, according to reasons for judgment published this week. The NGOs committed no crime and there was no cooperation with people smugglers, the court said.
A court in Italy last month acquitted all crew members of the rescue ship Iuventa, run by German NGO Jugend Ruttet, and crew of NGOs Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders (MSF), on charges of aiding and abetting illegal immigration over their involvement in rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
In the reasons for judgment, made public on Tuesday, the preliminary hearings judge (GUP) said investigators did not evaluate all the evidence in the case, "sometimes focusing their attention and giving too much" importance to elements of limited relevance, "without taking into account" the full picture presented by "all the available elements" or potentially by others which could have been "easily obtained."
The judge went on to question the decision taken by prosecutors in Trapani (Sicily) to present their conclusions based on such evidence in an "interpretation of facts not coherent with what has emerged during the preliminary hearing."
'Judicial truth unmasks political exploitation'
"The judicial truth unmasks the political exploitation of smear campaigns against non-governmental organizations: the lengthy sentence of the GUP in Trapani established the non-existence of any crime and eliminated any hypothesis of cooperation between NGOs and human traffickers, instead highlighting that the investigation was based on incomplete evidence analysed in a partial manner," said the attorneys of Jugend Rettet, Francesca Cancellato, Sandro Gamberini and Nicola Canestrini.
The sentence, they said, highlights the fact that the investigation was mainly based on data from the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (IMRCC) "without the acquisition and adequate consideration of elements such as the recordings of phone conversations between IMRCC and the vessels involved in various SAR events."
The decision established that NGO personnel did not collude with traffickers. According to the court's reasons, the evidence discussed during the preliminary hearing showed in a "clear and complete way" the lack of substance of the charges against the defendants.
The evidence left no room "for alternative solutions and could not be interpreted in a different way," according to the judgment.