The 43 migrants whose detention at a
new Italian-run centre in Albania has been nixed by Rome's
appeals court have been taken to the southern port city of Bari
and transferred to the local Palese CARA hosting centre.
The migrants, all adult men from Bangladesh and Egypt, reached
the Puglia port from Albania on Saturday night.
They were welcomed by health personnel and security forces, as
well as by activists from the Arci association who denounced the
"flop of the Albanian model", the government's new fast-track
processing scheme for asylum seekers.
The migrants belonged to the third group taken to Albania as
part the agreement between Rome and Tirana.
The group originally included a total of 49 people who were
intercepted south of Lampedusa and taken to Albania last Tuesday
by the Cassiopea Navy vessel.
Six were taken back to Italy earlier this week because they were
minors or considered vulnerable.
The Rome appeals court on Friday night referred their case to
the European Court of Justice to determine whether the countries
of provenance of the migrants could be deemed safe, "when the
substantial conditions for such a designation are not fulfilled
for certain categories of people".
The scheme has so far been stymied by the courts.
Italian judges also refused to validate the detention of the
first two groups of asylum seekers (totalling 20 men) taken to
Albania back in October and November, under the agreement
between Rome and Tirana, referring their cases to the European
Court of Justice - which had established on October 4 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 has tried to get around this hurdle with a
measure listing 19 safe countries for repatriation.
They included both Bangladesh and Egypt.
The government also stripped the immigration sections of
ordinary courts which took the first two decisions not to
validate detentions in Albania, putting them up to appeals
courts instead, one of which ruled not to validate the detention
of the third batch of migrants on Friday night.
The European Court of Justice is set to rule on the Italian
courts' referrals on February 25.
On Saturday, interior ministry sources said the government will
continue to fight irregular immigration by proceeding with its
plan to process asylum applications in Albania as part of a
scheme to create regional hubs that is backed by European
partners.
The protocol between Rome and Tirana for the fast-track
processing of asylum requests at Italian-run centres in Albania
"is the starting point for the creation of real regional hubs on
which there is full agreement with European ministers", the
sources noted.
Under the government's plan, when up to speed the two
Italian-run Albanian centres are set to process around 3,000
migrants a month.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has hailed
the accord as a possible model for other countries, and there
have been several expressions of interest.
And in an interview published on Sunday by QN, Deputy Premier
and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said the "fight against
illegal immigration can't stop".
"We must promote regular" immigration and "absolutely oppose
illegal" migration, he also said.
"We are convinced that we are right and so we are moving
forward", Tajani told the paper.
Premier Giorgia Meloni's rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party
MP Sara Kelany, who is in charge of migration in FdI, wrote in
an article published by Il Giornale d'Italia on Sunday that the
appeals court's ruling on Friday was "absurd, unjustified and
able to create an impasse in the general management of irregular
migration flows".
She accused magistrates of promoting "political ideologies" and
of blocking a "model appreciated by all of Europe".
Meanwhile the centre-left opposition at the weekend continued to
criticize the government's scheme, which members have slammed as
an expensive and ineffective propaganda stunt.
The deputy president of the populist Five-Star Movement (M5S)
Chiara Appendino said the government's migration policies
"aren't working because in January we had over 3,000 arrivals".
She added that cabinet members "were in the hands of a criminal"
whom "they freed and sent back home on a State flight",
referring to Libyan judicial police commander Najeem Osema
Almasri Habish and saying Italy relies on the north African
country to stem the flow of migration towards its southern
shores.
Almasri, the head of detention facilities including the
notorious Mitiga centre, was arrested in Italy on January 19 on
an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for alleged crimes
against humanity and war crimes but released two days later on a
technicality and flown back home on a secret services plane.
NGOs have long accused Italy of complicity in the
long-documented abuse of migrants and refugees held in Libyan
detention camps, as part of its agreement with Libya, forged in
2017 and renewed every three years to fight illegal immigration.
Meanwhile Ubaldo Pagano, a lawmaker from Puglia in the largest
opposition member, the Democratic Party (PD) who was in Bari on
Saturday evening when the asylum seekers arrived, said "managing
migration policies is a serious business" but the government is
"only promoting propaganda".
"We are here to witness this umpteenth failure and to take
responsibility for human beings who are uselessly transported
between Italy and Albania, even separated from family members",
he said on Sunday, slamming the new scheme as a "national
shame".
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