After a two-month-long pause,
operations to take migrants rescued in the Mediterranean to
Italian-run processing centres in Albania will resume,
well-informed sources said Friday.
Italian Navy patrol vessel Cassiopea is currently close to the
Sicilian island of Lampedusa and is ready to transfer migrants
to the centres of Shengjin and Gjader which Italy opened last
October to process asylum seekers, the sources said.
Italian judges refused to validate the detention of the first
two small groups of asylum seekers taken to Albania, under an
agreement between Rome and Tirana, referring their cases to the
European Court of Justice - which had earlier established that
an applicant could not go through a fast-track procedure that
could lead to their repatriation if their country of provenance
was not deemed wholly safe.
The countries of origin in the cases, Bangladesh and Egypt, were
not judged to be safe "over all of their territory".
The government in December tried to get around this hurdle with
a measure listing 19 safe countries for repatriation, including
both Bangladesh and Egypt.
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