Thanks to a donation received from Mediterranea Saving Humans, the JLProject can move forward.
Our goal remains the same: to stop pushbacks to Libya. How? In the courts, because pushbacks from the sea to the Libyan detention camps are ILLEGAL, and the governments that carry them out or facilitate them are committing CRIMES.
Recent successes in court have shown the public that ours is not a utopia, but a practical and viable path. The judges of the Civil Court of Rome have repeatedly ruled that people captured at sea and deported to Libyan detention camps have the right to be compensated if the Italian government had any role, even a minimal one, in the pushback they suffered. Italy, for example, transmitted the position of Adam’s boat to the Libyan militias, and for this, the judge ordered our government to admit the young man, who had been illegally pushed back, into Italian territory. On March 23, 2025, Adam was able to buy a regular plane ticket and fly safely from Tripoli to Rome. In the same way, on Christmas Day, Abdulatif arrived in Rome, having been illegally pushed back to Libya by the Italian Navy and the ship Asso Ventinove. At the same time, dozens of compensation cases are already in the works, five of which have already received favorable rulings at the first instance.
With the new database, JLProject and Open Rights are making public documentation on over 800 pushbacks. In addition to forensic investigations, this data is also extremely important for historical, sociological, and statistical research.
Justice. A word that regains its material meaning through the meticulous work we do at the JLProject: we find people who were pushed back to Libya and prove that their pushback was illegal because it was supported by the Italian government. We are certain that this is the right path to dismantle the entire massive system of illegal pushbacks from the sea to the Libyan detention camps—a system that our governments (plural is necessary) have created, managed, financed, supported, and concealed.
We thank Mediterranea for the valuable support and hope that other organizations will soon join the project.