Despite having valid stay permits and working to support their families, four North African immigrants were deported from Italy in July 2022 after being charged with terrorism. The Perugia court found the accusations baseless. Now the deportees are suing the Italian state for two million euros in damages.

The four men had been forced to leave their families -- wives and young children -- who from one moment to the next were left without any way to provide for their basic needs.

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'Severe financial and other damage' suffered

All of the men had long-term stay permits, permanent work contracts, and were fathers of young children who had been born in Italy when -- due to the accusations -- their permits were revoked and they were forced to leave the country.

Hilarry Sedu, the first lawyer of Nigerian origins to be elected into the Naples Bar Association Council, is the lawyer of the four North African nationals: three Moroccans (two aged 39 and one 57) and one Tunisian, 47 -- alongside his colleague Eduardo Cante.

The defense team has sent a request to the Italian interior ministry underscoring that their grave error "resulted in very serious damages, both in terms of assets and otherwise" to the men as well as "to their families, who depended on the income" of the men forced to leave the country.

"The state must acknowledge this error and compensate the suffering of the minors whose parents were taken from them after already being integrated into the Italian social context. It must act in such a way that these minors do not grow up with resentment of the Italian flag because we do not want the same tragedies as those of French banlieues to happen here," Sedu said.

The wives of the four immigrants -- El Arbi, Abdelkrim, Mohamed, and Souflane -- had to work to provide for both their children and their husbands, forced to repatriate.

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Case shelved in 2023

Perugia preliminary investigative judge Valerio d'Andria noted in shelving the case that the investigation had not found grounds for any of the charges, and that "though some of the defendants were found to belong to a context of radical Islam, no evidence was found of contact with any terrorism network, nor was writing attributed to them (on social media) found to be offensive."

The case against the four for participation in and association with terrorism for criminal ends was shelved on February 6. The investigation included wiretaps, searches, and analysis of posts on social media.

In addition to damages, the four immigrants have requested a revocation of the legal proceedings against them and their cancellation from the Schengen information system, as this is what is currently preventing them from re-entering the area.