Postface

Abstract

On February 23, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg condemned the Italian government, in Hirsi Jamaa and others v. Italy, to pay 15,000 euros to each of the defendants who brought the case forward. The case, which drew worldwide indignation for the callous ways in which Italy disregarded international law and the statutes set by the same European Union, refers to events that took place between May 6 and May 7, 2009, near the island of Lampedusa. There, Italian coast guard cutters intercepted three boats carrying Eritrean and Somali citizens toward Italy and returned them to Libya, where they were detained, beaten, and deprived of even basic necessities. While theoretically operating under the rules set forth by the Schengen Border Code that allow member states to stop unauthorized border crossings and, following the agreement signed by Prime Minister Berlusconi with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2008, to stop boats carrying migrants from Libya’s shores toward Italy (in exchange for preferential treatment in business dealings, compensation for Italy’s colonial occupation, and so on), this repatriation violated the international agreements of the Geneva Convention (of which Libya is not a signatory); the principle of nonrefoulement set forth by the ECHR, which states that “states must refrain from returning a person (directly or indirectly) to a place where he or she could face a real risk of being subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment”;¹ and Italy’s own constitution (article 10), which legislates that “foreigners, who are not allowed in their own country to exercise the democratic ideals and freedoms granted by the Italian Constitution, have a right of asylum in the territory of the Republic according to rules established by law.”²