In an unusual case, Italian authorities have accused Spanish firefighter Miguel Roldan of helping save thousands of illegal immigrants from drowning in the Mediterranean.
In June 2017, Roldan worked for 18 hours on a Mediterranean rescue ship when he received a phone call alerting him to the possibility of another boat sinking. The hour was over 10 pm and the area was completely dark. He and two of his colleagues went on a small boat To find the sunken immigrants, sailed 200 meters away and turned off the engines to follow the cries of help.
They found the migrants within 10 minutes, but the search and rescue center in Rome prevented the team from saving the migrants because they were in Libyan waters and asked them to negotiate with the state, which gave them permission to carry out the rescue 15 minutes later. The lives of most of the migrants who were struggling to survive. "We could only save half of them, and many of them drowned," says Roldan. He says his help to save these immigrants, as well as helping him with other rescue missions in the summer of 2017, is likely to lead him behind bars for 20 years, allegedly for helping illegal immigrants and helping human traffickers.
Roldan had previous experience in rescue missions in the Aegean Sea, near the Greek island of Lesbos, and decided to spend 20 days of his vacation in June 2017 aboard the Evanta, an old fishing vessel that had been converted into a rescue vessel by the German NGO, . The crew left the port of Lavalita in Malta and sailed 17 nautical miles off the coast of Libya in international waters and managed to save 5,000 people during that period.
When Ronaldo returned to Sevilla, the crew continued rescue missions in the Mediterranean, saving some 14,000 people in the following weeks. But the rescue mission stopped on August 2, when the Italian authorities seized the ship "EVENTA" and began an investigation with the crew, accusing it of "facilitating illegal immigration." A Sicilian judge accused the whole crew (seven Germans, two Scots and Roldan) of helping human traffickers. "It's an incredible accusation," says Roldan. "We respect laws so much that we keep watching people die of bureaucracy."