A court in Palermo on Wednesday ordered the Italian government to compensate the German NGO Sea-Watch with 76,000 euro (roughly $89.680) for detaining one of its illegal migrant ships in 2019.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni described the ruling as a “decision that leaves you speechless.”
In June 2019, a Sea-Watch ship commanded by German captain and former E.U. Parliament member Carola Rackete remained off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa with some 40 illegal migrant aboard for several days after Italian authorities denied the ship permission to dock.
On June 29, Rackete defied Italian authorities by ramming the ship into an Italian border police motorboat and forcefully docking the migrant-carrying ship. Rackete remained arrested until Italian courts eventually ordered her release. The vessel remained detained from July 12 to December 19, 2019 after a Palermo court, in response to an urgent appeal filed by Sea-Watch, ordered the Italian government to return the vessel.
Rai News reported that, on Wednesday, a Palermo court ordered the Italian state to reimburse 76,000 euro to Sea-Watch for the port, fuel, and legal and agency fees incurred by the ship between October and December 2019.
The Palermo court ruling comes days after a court in Rome blocked the deportation of Redouane Laaleg, a 53 year-old Algerian illegal migrant that Italian authorities seek to expel from their territory under grounds that he represents a danger to Italian society.
Laaleg received 23 different convictions for numerous crimes committed in Italy between 1999 and 2023. Despite his extensive criminal record, the court not only halted the man’s deportation, but ordered the Italian government to compensate him with 700 euro for carrying out “degrading” deportation proceedings against him.
“While the government announces a ‘naval blockade’ and attacks NGOs involved in sea rescue, the law once again sides with civil disobedience,” Sea-Watch celebrated in a statement, as per Sky TG24.
In a Wednesday evening video published on social media, Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni said that the Rome court ruling, while “shameful,” seems “trivial” compared to Wednesday’s ruling in favor of Sea-Watch and, after recounting Carola Rackete’s actions in 2019, stressed that the judges’ decision “leaves one literally speechless.”
“They have ordered the Italian state to pay 76,000 euro in compensation — again, from the Italian people — to the NGO that owns the ship captained by Carola Rackete because, after ramming our military vessel, the boat was rightly detained and seized,” Meloni said.
Meloni asked if its the job of the magistrates “to enforce the law or to reward those who boast about not respecting the law.” She also wondered if the judiciary’s “long series of objectively absurd decisions” seeks to send a message “that the government is not allowed to try to combat illegal mass immigration.
“I am sorry if I disappoint some people because we are particularly stubborn and we will continue and do our best to keep the word we gave to Italians and to enforce the rules and laws of the Italian state, and we will do everything necessary to defend, in particular, the borders and the safety of citizens,” she concluded.