Cutro shipwreck: SAR organizations demand truth, full accountability and justice

With today’s hearing, the criminal trial for the shipwreck of Cutro began, a statement by SAR NGOs has said. A coalition of search and rescue organizations at sea (SAR) constituted civil parties is demanding truth and justice for this massacre. A delegation of the various SAR organizations was present today in Crotone together with their defenders and Amnesty International, as an international observer. Today’s hearing addressed the issue of the possibility for the media to record the hearings. The panel confirmed the order with which it had already rejected the multiple requests presented by the radio and television broadcasters on January 12, thus believing to safeguard the “serene and regular” conduct of the trial. This is a decision that directly affects the right to report and information for the families of the victims and the community, in a process of undoubted social importance, also at an international level.

During the hearing, the issue of the admission of evidence was discussed. The College also admitted all the prosecution’s witnesses, reserving for another time the decision on the admissibility of the requests of all the other parties, including the NGOs civil parties. A first calendar of hearings has also been announced – on 10, 17, 24 February and 3 March – in which the first witnesses of the prosecutor will be heard.

“After the postponement in mid-January – the NGOs comment – it is important that this path to shed full light on the dynamics of the shipwreck, establish all responsibilities and have justice for the victims, has taken the first step. We now hope that we can proceed without further postponement and that the process will be useful to give priority to rescue interventions over those of “border security”.

NGOs are demanding truth and justice for the chain of events, underestimations and omissions that led to one of the most tragic civil shipwrecks in Italian history, off the coast of Steccato di Cutro on the night between 25 and 26 February 2023, when a boat sank, causing the death of at least 94 people and an unknown number of missing. In the trial, six officers belonging to the Guardia di Finanza and the Coast Guard are accused of manslaughter and multiple manslaughter.

“We know from experience that timeliness is a key factor for successful rescue operations,” the NGOs comment. – For this reason, when we talk about rescue at sea, delays are not a simple accident or a mistake, but must be considered as acts of negligence because they can cost lives. As the shipwreck of Cutro tragically recalled”.

In the case of the Summer Love gulet that sank off the coast of Calabria, the Italian authorities are accused of having given priority to the police operation and then considered the rescue intervention, but with serious delay and with little coordination at the local level between the two law enforcement bodies involved. And the outcome that came out of it was dramatic.

In recent years, it has been exhaustively documented, even by us SAR organizations active in the Mediterranean, how delays in the start of rescue operations have led to many avoidable massacres. The judgment on the shipwreck of Cutro cannot, therefore, stop at the lower ranking officials, or simply at those who were on duty that night, but every decision – even those of the higher authorities – should be taken into consideration by going up the entire chain of command.

EMERGENCY, Louise Michel, Mediterranea Saving Humans, Sea-Watch, SOS Humanity and SOS MEDITERRANEE have joined forces to demand truth and justice and to support the families of the victims in their request for justice.

To guarantee the right to inform and the right to be informed, as required by art. 21 of the Constitution and article 6 of the ECHR on the right to report and the right to a “fair trial”, the NGOs have requested and filed through their lawyers a reasoned brief to ask that the recording of hearings by the media be allowed.

We remind you that the panel of judges has decided that recordings and filming of the hearings will be guaranteed only through the equipment in use by the court and that journalists who wish to acquire them will have to make a request, which “if anything” will be authorized by the Court.

The NGOs hope that during the trial the technical consultants and representatives of all the organizations will be heard as witnesses, while Amnesty International Italy will be present as an international observer.

“The protection of life, the duty to rescue those in distress at sea and international law must be the priority and must be respected, always, also in the central Mediterranean” conclude the NGOs.