Four 'Captains' from Sudan and Chad Acquitted After 17 Months of Unjust Detention
The Naples Court acquits four refugees accused of aiding irregular immigration. A turning point in the fight against the criminalization of migration.
PRESS RELEASE
Today, the Naples Court in collegial composition acquitted four refugees, four “captains” from Sudan and Chad, of the charge of aiding irregular immigration.
It took over 17 months of pre-trial detention, following their arrest at the port of Naples in July 2024, to demonstrate that the four defendants acted under necessity.
From the beginning of their journey to survival, they have experienced suffering, torture, and above all, imprisonment. Facts that emerged and were documented throughout the entire trial proceedings.
Detained in Sudan because they refused to enlist as child soldiers, detained and tortured in Libya, they crossed the Mediterranean Sea and after managing to survive in this place of death for so many refugees, they landed in Italy, only to know the Poggioreale prison.
A Turning Point in the Criminalization of Migration
The charge of aiding immigration, a tool used to suppress the phenomenon of irregular immigration, today reaches a point of arrest. In a country that has made immigration the most shameful point of political calculation, criminalizing migrants, refugees, and activists who save lives in the Mediterranean, today’s acquittal clearly indicates that the over 1,300 detainees in prisons are only the result of the repression of freedom of movement and the consequence of the inevitable outcome of repressive and criminalization policies, in which the history of the people involved becomes the deafening background of those who only cry “invader.”
An investigation full of flaws, often the result of an accusatory paradigm whereby those who steer lose their individual journey, to end up as instruments and scapegoats of criminal border policies.
The Recognition of the State of Necessity
The logic of criminal law, applied uncritically to migratory phenomena, has ended up becoming an “interpretive cap” of reality, which has prevented seeing the complexity of the structural causes of migration.
The recognition of the state of necessity in this judicial case represents a turning point to overcome the use of this crime to strike freedom: freedom to choose one’s destiny and freedom of movement.
Signatories of the press release:
- ASGI Campania
- Legal Clinic for Immigration and Citizenship of Rome
- Legal and Sociological Clinic of the University of Parma
- Mediterranea Saving Humans