ROME — Six members of Italy’s police and coastguard went on trial Tuesday over the 2023 shipwreck off the Calabrian coast that killed at least 94 migrants, including 35 children, in one of the country’s deadliest maritime disasters in a decade.
The case, heard in the southern city of Crotone, centers on allegations that authorities failed to mount a timely search-and-rescue operation for a wooden boat that had sailed from Turkey carrying people from Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Syria. Around 80 survived when the vessel broke apart on rocks near the beach at the tourist town of Cutro before dawn on Feb. 26, 2023. Officials say more passengers may have perished and were never found.
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Four officers from the Guardia di Finanza (GDF) and two members of the coastguard face charges related to their roles inside remote command centers that monitored the boat for hours after it was detected about 38 kilometers off the Calabrian coast. Prosecutors say a plane from the European Union border agency Frontex flagged the vessel’s presence and condition to Italian authorities, but a GDF patrol boat turned back in worsening weather and a rescue mission never materialized before the ship smashed into shore.
The prosecution accuses GDF personnel of failing to pass critical information to the coastguard and alleges coastguard officers did not seek details that would have made the urgency unmistakable. Defense attorneys say the chain of responsibility is more complex. A lawyer for GDF officer Alberto Lippolis, who managed an air and naval command center on Calabria’s opposite coast, said his client was “very calm” entering trial and is being blamed for subordinates’ actions.
The wreck shocked Italy. Dozens of bodies washed up across the beach, with coffins later lining a nearby sports hall — brown for adults, white for children — as families and local residents waited to identify the dead.
Humanitarian groups operating search-and-rescue ships in the central Mediterranean, including SOS Humanity and Mediterranea Saving Humans, have joined the case as civil parties. They argue the tragedy reflects a broader policy under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government of treating migrant crossings primarily as a law enforcement matter rather than a humanitarian emergency.
Judith Sunderland, acting deputy director for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch, said accountability should extend beyond individual officers to “Italian state policies that prioritise deterring and criminalising asylum seekers and migrants over saving lives.”
Meloni, who visited Cutro after the disaster, placed responsibility on human smugglers and championed tougher penalties for those who cause deaths at sea. In 2024, an Italian court sentenced two alleged traffickers — one Turkish, one Syrian — to 20 years in prison. Later that year, two Pakistanis and a Turk were convicted in Crotone for lesser roles in managing those on board, receiving sentences of 14 to 16 years.
The trial unfolds against a shifting migration landscape. About 66,000 migrants reached Italy by sea last year, a tally similar to 2024 and markedly below the more than 157,000 arrivals logged in 2023, according to Italian government figures. The central Mediterranean remains the world’s deadliest migration route: at least 1,340 people died attempting the crossing last year, the U.N. International Organization for Migration estimates.
Recent incidents underscore the continuing risk. On Monday, the IOM said it feared for more than 50 people missing after a shipwreck off Libya during Storm Harry. Days earlier, one-year-old twin girls were reported missing after a boat ran into bad weather on the route from Tunisia to Italy.
The Crotone proceedings are expected to scrutinize in detail how information moved between Italian agencies on the night of the Cutro wreck and whether a rescue was impeded by operational choices. The outcome could ripple across Italy’s search-and-rescue posture — and its politics — as the country again confronts the human toll of migration across the Mediterranean.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
