Here we go again. After the request to send the Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini to trial for the Diciotti case, we are awaiting the request from some magistrate ready to investigate him also for the case of the 47 migrants stranded on board the Sea Watch in front of Syracuse. Nothing strange for an Italy where the sense of the State of some magistrates goes in the opposite direction compared to the common sense and feelings of the majority of the population. To understand how justice risks transforming, once more, in political arms at the service of magistrates convinced that they can change governments with indictments, the paradoxes of the Sea Watch case are enough.

Strictly logical and navigation law, any independent judge would not send Salvini to trial, but the captain of the Sea Watch ship and the managers of the German NGO to which it reports. The deal was highly suspicious from the start. In mid-January the Sea Watch ship 3 flying the Dutch flag, but managed by the German NGO of the same name, It has been sailing in front of Libyan territorial waters for days. While the vessel waits, the NGO publishes the position of the vessel on its website. The inevitable suspicion is that the organization is trying to induce human traffickers to launch a dinghy or a boat. The impression of a piloted rescue becomes more evident when the mechanism is discovered 19 January allows Sea Watch to recover 47 migrants boarded on a sailing dinghy 30 miles north of Zuara, within the SAR (rescue area) Libyan. The rescue takes place in the absence of any request for help received by the Libyan Coast Guard or the rescue centers in Rome or Valletta. Everything passes, Instead, through the channels managed by NGOs that support the indiscriminate reception of migrants.

The alarm addressed to Alarm Phone, an informal call center run by the NGO Watchformed gets Moonbird off the ground, an aircraft of Swiss humanitarian pilots specialized in identifying migrants based in Malta. Immediately afterwards Sea Watch, using the coordinates provided by Moonbird, embarks the migrants without informing the Libyan Coast Guard responsible for the SAR area. Already here there is a first violation of the rules. In fact, according to maritime law, it is the authorities of the SAR area who have to indicate the port of disembarkation. Obviously Sea Watch justifies itself by claiming to have contacted Tripoli, but say have not received any response.

“We called Tripoli several times but no one answered - Giorgia Linardi justifies herself, Italian contact person for the NGO. It's not the first time this has happened. Only once did they answer and we tried to communicate in English, French, Italian and Egyptian Arabic but we couldn't understand each other. The call ended with a Tripoli Coast Guard commander hanging up”.

The second infringement occurs two days later when, in conjunction with the deterioration of the weather situation, Sea Watch requests to land in Lampedusa. Landing denied because as the Sea Watch spokesperson herself admits, the Rome rescue center clarifies that Lampedusa “it was not adequate for shelter from the cyclone approaching from the north-west. At that point the closest option is the Tunisian coast of Zarzis which is only distant 70 miles compared to 100 which separate the Sea Watch from the Syracuse harbor. A choice recommended by both the Hague authorities, responsible for the safety of Dutch-flagged ships, both from the Italian ones. Strangely though, according to what they claim about the Sea Watch, not even Tunisia responds to communications. Justifying himself with the alleged lack of response, the captain of the boat heads for Syracuse despite the bad weather and the refusal of the Italian authorities who announce that they want to deny him entry into the port. An arbitrary and dangerous decision as noted the Minister of Transport Danilo Toninelli. “The NGO ship had to repair in Tunisia, as the nearby fishing boats did in those hours of expected worsening weather... instead he decided to challenge the sea, aiming towards the Sicilian coasts which lie beyond 100 miles from Lampedusa. And therefore irresponsibly jeopardizing the health and lives of the castaways.”

At this point the purposes of Sea Watch are clear. The true purpose of the vessel, and the NGO to which it belongs, it is not saving the lives of migrants by disembarking them in the nearest port, but to open a dispute with Italy and Europe even at the cost of putting its human cargo at risk. It is not satisfied with having positioned itself in such a way as to facilitate the departure of a dinghy operated by human traffickers and having recovered it in defiance of the Libyan authorities responsible for the rescue Sea Watch uses migrants to put pressure on Italy and Europe. Demonstrating, once more, that for Sea Watch and all the other NGOs, migrants are not lives to be saved, but tools to claim the fall of borders and impose unlimited hospitality on Italy and the rest of Europe.