(ANSA) - Ragusa, April 16 - A preliminary investigations judge in the Sicilian city of Ragusa on Monday ordered the release of a migrant search-and-rescue ship run by Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, rejecting a request from local prosecutors for it to stay under sequester.

The vessel has been berthed in the port of Pozzallo since landing there on March 18 having saved 218 migrants in the southern Mediterranean.

It was sequestered upon an order by Catania prosecutors in relation to a probe into possible case of aiding illegal migration.

The ship landed in Pozzallo after the NGO refused to hand the asylum seekers it was carrying over to the Libyan authorities. A Catania judge extended the sequester on March 27 but transferred the case to Ragusa, having rejected allegations of criminal association.

</s>Each year, thousands of African migrants depart Libya in rickety boats and risk their lives seeking better opportunities in Europe. Many other migrants remain in the North African country, drawn by opportunities but also subjected to mistreatment at the hands of smugglers and traffickers.

Libya has long-attracted migrants in search of better lives. But unresolved security challenges, a weakened infrastructure and a depreciating currency have led to harsh conditions and stark choices for many migrants who find themselves living there.

Othman Belbeisi is the chief of mission in Libya for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental group that works to make migration safer.

In an interview with VOA, Belbeisi said that Libya has always been both a destination and transit country for migrants, but poor governance, an ailing infrastructure and economic challenges have restricted migrants’ options and bred lawlessness.

That’s resulted in what Belbeisi calls “modern-time slavery,” in which people are held against their will and forced into life-threatening situations.Libya hosts about 700,000 migrants from 35 countries, he said.

Some have just arrived, but many others have lived in the country for years. They come with different expectations. Some plan to work. Others intend to stay only briefly, before realizing they don’t have the means to move on. Many are from West Africa, and most lack valid travel documents.

In addition to Libya’s migrant population, about 165,000 Libyans have been internally displaced. Both groups are especially vulnerable to challenges faced by the entire society, including an unreliable telecommunications network and a health care system in disarray.

More investment and development are needed to rebuild Libya’s infrastructure, but improved security must come first, Belbeisi said.

“Everything else can be achieved once you have security," he said. "Without security, we will continue to be challenged if we want to achieve anything.”

In the absence of security, smuggling and trafficking networks have proliferated and wield considerable power. At smuggling hubs, migrants are held captive and experience inhumane conditions.

Yet migrants are often the ones punished.

“Unfortunately, we see the migrants being criminalized and detained. And the smugglers — many of them are free,” Belbeisi said.

Searching for something better

In Libya, the IOM is most concerned with an increasing number of deaths, both in the desert and at sea.

There’s been an uptick in migration flows to Europe across the Mediterranean for the past three years, although the numbers have tapered off recently.

Those who take boats across the Mediterranean do so as a last resort, Belbeisi said. There are no guarantees of survival, nor of success in Europe. But when staying put no longer offers any benefits, people move forward.

“Most of the migrants who are leaving have nothing, so they are looking for anything by taking the boats,” Belbeisi said.

From the IOM’s perspective, it’s important to provide information about risks but to allow migrants to make personal decisions.

One initiative the IOM uses to provide options to migrants facing difficult choices is a voluntary return program. Through this program, migrants who wish to return home can receive assistance in leaving Libya, and participate in vocational training and reintegration programs upon returning home.

The IOM handles voluntary returns on a case-by-case basis and treats it not as an endorsement to return home but rather an option for those who want it.

To understand the challenges migrants face, Belbeisi advocates a comprehensive approach that rejects oversimplified labels like “economic migrants” in favor of a more nuanced understanding of how and why people leave their homes to rebuild their lives. For Belbeisi, that means focusing on labor migration along with family reunification.

The key to improving the situation for migrants in Libya is to create regular migration channels, according to Belbeisi. That will require a coordinated effort from many nations.

“Libya can contribute to the solution, but Libya cannot take responsibility alone. This is a global responsibility,” he said.</s>An Italian judge ordered the release Monday of a migrant rescue ship, impounded since last month as part of an investigation in which three NGO officials are accused of aiding illegal immigration.

The ship, belonging to Spanish aid group Proactiva Open Arms, was seized in mid-March after NGO workers refused to hand over migrants saved during a rescue mission off the Libyan coast to the Libyan coastguard, instead delivering them to the Italian island of Sicily.

On Monday a judge in the Sicilian city of Ragusa said that Libya "was not yet in a position to take in rescued migrants while ensuring their fundamental rights were respected" and considered that the NGO had acted "out of necessity."

Proactiva Open Arms founder Oscar Camps tweeted that although the decision was "good news," it was "just the first step" as the probe into "promoting illegal immigration" continued.

The controversial rescue mission took place on 15 March after the Italian coastguard flagged up two vessels in distress 73 nautical miles off Libya to the NGO, before later clarifying that Tripoli would be coordinating the rescue operations.

The NGO began to rescue the migrants and then refused to transfer them to a Libyan speedboat which arrived later.

Public prosecutors in the Sicilian cities of Catania and Ragusa say that the migrants should have been taken to Malta, the nearest safe port, and accuse the NGO of deliberately taking them to Italy.

In response, Open Arms has said that Malta only deals with medical emergencies.

In Spain, the ship's seizure has sparked a support movement under the slogan, "saving lives is not a crime," with protests and an online petition which has garnered over 300,000 signatures, including those of actors Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

The Open Arms ship is the second to be seized by Italian authorities after the Iuventa, chartered by German NGO Jugend Rettet, was held last summer.

A year ago, a dozen NGO rescue ships patrolled the Libyan coast, but now only two remain: the Aquarius operated by SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the German-owned Sea-Watch.

Other NGOs have suspended their operations due to increased threats from the Libyan navy and a decline in departures -- which have dropped 60 percent since the summer of 2017 -- following controversial agreements made by Rome with Libyan authorities and militias.</s>ROME, April 16 (Reuters) - An Italian court on Monday ordered the release of a Spanish charity ship that was seized after prosecutors said it was helping to ferry migrants illegally from Libya.

The court in Ragusa, Sicily, found that the rescue on March 15 of 218 migrants off the Libyan coast by humanitarian group Proactiva Open Arms was justified because migrants face "grave violations of human rights" in Libya.

These include forced labour, rape, and detention without adequate food and health care, Judge Giovanni Giampiccolo said in a court order seen by Reuters.

Open Arms picked up the migrants from two overcrowded rubber boats in international waters, defying orders from the European Union-supported Libyan coastguard to leave them to be retrieved by one of its own ships. According to Monday's court order, the Libyans threatened to fire at the ship if Open Arms did not hand over the migrants.

When the migrants disembarked in Italy, the ship was impounded. A criminal investigation into its captain and the rescue coordinator for helping illegal immigration is continuing. Italian law separates legal procedures for physical assets from those for people.

"It's obviously good news," Riccardo Gatti, Open Arms' mission head for Italy, told Reuters by phone.

"But we're still concerned about the fact that two people remain under investigation... and Italy remains a hostile environment for migrant arrivals."

The case has highlighted tensions between humanitarian rescuers and authorities who are trying to stop people from making the dangerous crossing to Europe from Africa.

A German ship, the Iuventa, used by aid group Jugend Rettet, was impounded in August on similar charges, which it denies.

Italy has agreed to pass more responsibility for Mediterranean rescues to Libya's coast guard by 2020.

International law requires migrants rescued at sea be taken to a "place of safety" but the United Nations has said they face dire conditions in Libya, and those who have made the crossing tell of nightmarish treatment.

Some 5,330 migrants have reached Italian shores from Libya this year, the Interior Ministry says, a more than 80 percent fall from the same period in 2017, thanks partly to interceptions by Libya's coast guard, which has been trained and financed by the EU and Italy.

Since 2014, more than 600,000 migrants have reached Italy by sea. Many have moved on to other EU countries. (Editing by Catherine Evans)</s>A judge ordered Italian authorities on Monday to release a migrant rescue ship belonging to the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, which was seized in Sicily last month.

Prosecutors sought to extend a confiscation order on the Open Arms ship for a second time, but were denied by an investigating judge in Ragusa.

The vessel had been confined to dock since March 18th, after prosecutors accused the charity of aiding illegal immigration in connection with a rescue operation that it carried out in international waters off Libya.

The charges have not been dropped, according to Proactiva's founder, Oscar Camps, who said that the Italian investigation continued. He welcomed the ship's release as "only a first step".

READ ALSO: Italy seizes NGO boat that refused to take migrants to Libya

Having gone to the aid of two vessels in difficulty and taken 218 people on board the Open Arms, Proactiva refused the Libyan coast guard's orders to hand over the migrants. According to the aid group, Libyan guards threatened to kill their crew if they did not surrender those rescued, who included women and children.

Instead the Spanish ship sailed for Sicily, in what Italian prosecutors allege was a deliberate plan to bring the migrants to Italy.

According to the Italian coast guard, international norms usually require ships to wait for their country of origin to arrange where migrants rescued at sea should be taken. The Open Arms sailed for Italy while still awaiting directions from the Spanish government and despite the fact that it was closer to Malta at the time, the coast guard said.

The group defended itself by saying that the Italian authorities had asked them to intervene in the first place and that forcibly returning migrants to Libya would have placed their lives in danger.

The group's supporters organized protests in Madrid and Barcelona and more than 300,000 people signed petitions calling for the ship's release, under the slogan: "Saving lives is not a crime."

READ ALSO: Spanish migrant rescuers hit out at Italian boat seizure



 "If saving lives is a crime, I'm a criminal": a protester in Madrid. Photo: Gabriel Bouys/AFP

Italy seized another rescue ship, the Iuventa, in August on similar allegations that the German NGO that operates it had facilitated illegal immigration.

The ship remains impounded in Lampedusa, despite the group's efforts to get it back. A new hearing is scheduled for April 23rd.

More than 600,000 migrants are believed to have reached Italy by boat in the past four years, though arrivals fell by 34 percent in 2017, according to the EU border agency.

The drop is largely attributed to an accord between Italy and Libya, which has seen the Libyan coast guard assume responsibility for a large part of rescue operations.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, migrants face appalling conditions in Libya. A 22-year-old Eritrean, rescued at sea by the Open Arms ship last month after spending 18 months in detention in Libya, died from severe malnutrition just hours after landing in Sicily.

Last year around a dozen NGO ships patrolled the coast off Libya. Now there are only two such ships, with others suspending their operations following the drop in departures, as well as threats from Libya and the seizure of boats.
• Italy's migrants don't expect life to change after the election
• Italy closes Lampedusa migrant centre for renovation after conditions criticized</s>An Italian judge ordered yesterday the release of a Spanish non-governmental organization's (NGO) migrant rescue boat, which was impounded by prosecutors last month. The legal case is part of a wider political and legal clash between humanitarian NGOs and Italian authorities who wish to regulate and restrict the flow of migrants into the country.

The decision by Ragusa pre-trial judge Giovanni Giampiccolo was reported by Italian news agency ANSA and confirmed by a spokeswoman for the Spanish charity, Proactiva Open Arms.

"It is only a first step, and good news," the charity's founder Oscar Camps tweeted. He said that his organization remained under criminal investigation.

"We won a battle but I think that the legal war does not end today, it will continue and it will be long," Alessandro Gamberini, a lawyer for Proactiva Open Arms, was quoted as saying by ANSA.

Gamberini is defending Open Arms mission chief Ana Isabel Montes Mier, one of the two members of the Spanish NGO who are being investigated for abetting illegal migration.

As part of the same investigation, the Open Arms vessel was impounded on March 18, a day after it docked in Pozzallo, Sicily, with 216 rescued migrants it refused to hand over to the Libyan coastguard.

Catania Prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro started a legal case against Proactiva because the NGO dodged Libyan orders and then took the migrants to Italy, rather than to the closer port of Malta.

The Spanish NGO insists it cannot allow people to be returned to Libya, where they risk torture and abuse. It also said the Libyans threatened to shoot at its personnel.

Zuccaro's office initially announced investigations against three Proactiva officials, but managed to identify only two. Three weeks ago, it was stripped of responsibility over the affair.

On March 27, another pre-trial judge dropped the more serious crime of criminal association against the two remaining Proactiva suspects, and moved the case from Catania to Ragusa, another Sicilian town.

German migrant rescue NGO Jugend Rettet is facing a similar legal ordeal. Its ship was impounded in August by other Sicilian prosecutors who suspected the group of abetting illegal migration. The charity is fighting to have the boat back, and Italy's top appeals body, the Court of Cassation, is due to rule on the case on April 23. "These are two different cases but [the decision of the Ragusa judge] makes us hopeful," Jugend Rettet spokesman Philipp Kuelker told dpa, stressing that no member of the NGO has so far been charged.</s>MADRID — An Italian judge has ordered Italy to release a Spanish aid group’s rescue ship that was impounded for taking 218 migrants to Italy, finding that the ship was operating in an emergency when it launched the rescue, the group said Monday.

Proactiva Open Arms said the ship was free to leave the Sicilian port of Pozzallo, but that prosecutors are still investigating whether its crew should face charges of criminal association and aiding illegal immigration.

Ragusa investigating magistrate Giovanni Giampiccolo recognized that the ship was acting under “a state of necessity” when it rescued the migrants off Libya’s coast and refused Libyan coast guard commands to turn them over, Proactiva lawyer Rosa Lo Faro said.

The magistrate ruled that international standards call for those rescued at sea to be brought somewhere “safe” — and that Libya was not safe, the ANSA news agency reported.

The investigation stems from a tense high-seas standoff last month between the Open Arms crew and the Libyan coast guard. The group refused to hand over the migrants they had picked up in international waters and took them to Italy, where the ship was immediately impounded.

“At all times, we acted according to existing international norms and laws created to protect human lives at sea and the rights of those rescued,” Open Arms said.

Amid a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe, Italy has been working to stem the tide of migrants leaving lawless Libya and arriving in Italy. It has helped the Libyan coast guard beef up its patrols, reduced the number of aid groups performing sea rescues and — in a move criticized by some aid groups — negotiated deals with Libyan militias that had long profited from trafficking humans.

The strategy has resulted in a 75 per cent drop in the number of migrants arriving in Italy in the first three months of 2018, to some 6,100, according to Interior Ministry figures.</s>The founder of a Spanish aid group that rescues migrants in the Mediterranean says Italian authorities have released his organization's ship after impounding it for taking 218 migrants to Italy.

Proactiva Open Arms founder Oscar Camps says in a tweet Monday that the ship is free to leave the Sicilian port of Pozzallo. But he says Italy is still investigating whether the group should face charges of criminal association and aiding illegal immigration.

The investigation stems from a tense high-seas standoff last month between the Open Arms crew and the Libyan coast guard. The group refused to relinquish the migrants they had picked up in international waters and took them to Italy, where authorities are trying to stem migration.</s>Italian authorities have released a migrant-rescue boat that has been impounded for almost a month but are still investigating two of its crew on suspicion of enabling illegal immigration.



The Open Arms – which is operated by the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms and has rescued more than 5,000 people from the Mediterranean over the past three years – was seized on 19 March after it docked in the Sicilian port of Pozzallo with 218 migrants onboard.

Its crew had rescued them from a leaky raft off the coast of Libya and refused to hand them over to the Libyan coastguard, arguing that they were in international waters.

Despite reportedly being threatened with being shot, the captain of the Open Arms said he could not release them into Libyan custody because of the risk of abuse and human rights violations they could face in the North African country.

The vessel was impounded and three crew members placed under investigation. The chief prosecutor of Catania, Carmelo Zuccaro, has accused them of enabling illegal immigration by refusing to hand the migrants over to the Libyan coastguards.

On Monday, a judge ordered the Open Arms to be released. However, Prosecutors are still looking into whether its captain, Marc Reig, and the mission’s coordinator, Anabel Montes, should face trial on charges of enabling illegal immigration.

Riccardo Gatti, the head of the Open Arms mission, confirmed that the ship had been released but said it had been damaged by bad weather during its confiscation and would not be able to return to sea immediately.

“We are finally free and this is a first, important step,” he told the Guardian. “But the fight is still long. Our captain is still [facing charges] of enabling illegal immigration and the prosecutors in Catania are continuing with their investigations against NGOs, criminalising people who saves lives.”

Gatti said the ship’s condition meant the NGO would have to look for another vessel but was sending its sailing boat, the Astral, into the save-and-rescue zone to continue operations.

Prosecutors declined to comment, but have shelved investigations into allegations that the crew of the Open Arms was involved in “criminal association” and had been conspiring with smugglers in smuggle migrants to Europe.

The case comes amid growing concerns that NGOs are being criminalised for trying to save lives in the Mediterranean.

In August last year, Italian police seized a rescue ship operated by German NGO Jugend Rettet as part of an Italian attempt to end the migrant and refugee crisis.

Meanwhile, Helena Maleno, a Spanish journalist and human rights activist who is thought to have saved hundreds of lives by alerting maritime authorities to the plight of vulnerable migrants in the Mediterranean, has appeared in court in Morocco over allegations that she has been colluding with people traffickers.

Human Rights Watch has hit out at such draconian responses. “It is shocking that Europe has reached the point of criminalising rescue at sea,” it said in a statement last month.

“Europeans should support, not smear, people saving lives in the Mediterranean, and remember that EU and Italian policies are propping up a cycle of detention and violence in Libya, while groups like Proactiva are saving lives.”

According to figures from the International Organization for Migration, 16,847 migrants and refugees have reached Europe by sea so far this year and 557 people have died in the attempt.</s>MADRID (AP) - An Italian judge has ordered Italy to release a Spanish aid group’s rescue ship that was impounded for taking 218 migrants to Italy, finding that the ship was operating in an emergency when it launched the rescue, the group said Monday.

Proactiva Open Arms said the ship was free to leave the Sicilian port of Pozzallo, but that prosecutors are still investigating whether its crew should face charges of criminal association and aiding illegal immigration.

Ragusa investigating magistrate Giovanni Giampiccolo recognized that the ship was acting under “a state of necessity” when it rescued the migrants off Libya’s coast and refused Libyan coast guard commands to turn them over, Proactiva lawyer Rosa Lo Faro said.

The magistrate ruled that international standards call for those rescued at sea to be brought somewhere “safe” - and that Libya was not safe, the ANSA news agency reported.

The investigation stems from a tense high-seas standoff last month between the Open Arms crew and the Libyan coast guard. The group refused to hand over the migrants they had picked up in international waters and took them to Italy, where the ship was immediately impounded.

“At all times, we acted according to existing international norms and laws created to protect human lives at sea and the rights of those rescued,” Open Arms said.

Amid a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe, Italy has been working to stem the tide of migrants leaving lawless Libya and arriving in Italy. It has helped the Libyan coast guard beef up its patrols, reduced the number of aid groups performing sea rescues and - in a move criticized by some aid groups - negotiated deals with Libyan militias that had long profited from trafficking humans.

The strategy has resulted in a 75 percent drop in the number of migrants arriving in Italy in the first three months of 2018, to some 6,100, according to Interior Ministry figures.

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A judge in Ragusa, Sicily, Italy, orders the release of a Proactiva Open Arms migrant search and rescue ship detained in Pozzallo since arriving there on March 18 carrying over 200 migrants rescued from the Mediterranean Sea. Catania prosecutors requested the Spanish ship's detention alleging involvement in illegal immigration after Proactiva refused to hand the migrants over to Libya.