Sea Watch: arrest Carola Rackete, January 16 hearing in the Cassation

2019-11-16T16:25:59.919Z

On January 16 in front of the third section of the Court of Cassation: a hearing was set on the case of Carola Rackete, the commander of Sea Watch 3 arrested on June 29 for resistance to a public officer and resistance or violence to a warship. The "captain" was accused of forcing the Guardia di Finanza checkpoint to bring migrants rescued in Libyan waters to land. On 2 July, the investigating judge Alessandra Vella decided not to validate the arrest because the thirty-one would have acted in the presence of "a state of necessity", which would have been to bring migrants to the ground. The Agrigento prosecutor, Luigi Patronaggio, and the public prosecutor Gloria Andreoli asked the Cassation to annul the order (no arrest, however, even if accepted because there was no appeal on this point), stating that the the arrest was, on the contrary, legitimate. "It cannot be assumed that the exoneration of having fulfilled a visa duty, that the migrants were safely in the roadstead with the maximum assistance of the authorities who had also arranged some landings for health reasons", is the decisive point of the appeal. According to the prosecutors, it was "an unjustified act of force".