EU rights court says Italy not responsible for Libyan coast guard actions over migrant boat sinking
The Strasbourg court declared the case inadmissible, finding Italy did not have 'effective control' of the expanse of waters off the coast of Tripoli where a small ship carrying some 150 people sank in 2017.
Twenty people died in the incident. Around 45 survivors onboard the ship said they were taken to Tajura Detention Center in Tripoli where they were beaten and abused.
The judges found that the captain and crew of the Libyan vessel Ras Jadir had acted independently when they answered a distress signal in the early morning hours on Nov. 6.
Italy has supplied the Libyans with funding, vessels and training as part of an agreement to slow the tide of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. The judges found, however, that this support did not prove 'Italy had taken over Libya's public-authority powers.'
A group of migrants was rescued by the humanitarian organization Sea Watch and were taken to Italy.
A ruling in favor of the 14 survivors who filed the complaint at the ECHR could have undermined international agreements made by several European Union countries with Libya, Turkey and others to prevent migrants from coming to European shores.
The ECHR handles complaints against the 46 member states of the Council of Europe. The intergovernmental organization is not an EU institution and was set up after the Second World War to promote peace and democracy.
Libya is not a member of the Council of Europe, so the court has no jurisdiction over the country's actions.
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Follow AP's coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
Molly Quell, The Associated Press
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The Hill
10 minutes ago
- The Hill
Zelensky gives Trump a golf putter
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NBC News
11 minutes ago
- NBC News
Trump's Ukraine diplomacy faces a new hurdle: Where can Putin and Zelenskyy meet?
A man wanted for war crimes sitting across the table from the leader of the country he invaded? That is the spectacle that President Donald Trump is pushing to arrange in the next few weeks, convinced he can break the deadlock between Russia's Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a summit that could help forge an end to the Kremlin's war. The plan, however, is tangled from the start. Some European leaders maintain that no such meeting should take place before Russia agrees to a ceasefire. Many analysts doubt that Putin will actually agree to meet with Zelenskyy. And even if he does, there's the fraught subject of where to hold the negotiations, given that Putin faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Kremlin plays it cool Trump revealed Monday that he called the Russian leader 'to begin the arrangements' during his White House meeting with Zelenskyy and a posse of European leaders. 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Despite being an ICC signatory, Switzerland could welcome Putin for a summit given that he would be coming for peace purposes, said Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis. 'The goal of receiving Mr. Putin in Switzerland without him being arrested is one hundred percent achievable,' Cassis told Swiss national broadcaster SRF. Austria's leader also offered his country, which stood at the divide of communist Eastern Europe and the capitalist West during the Cold War. "We stand ready to offer our good services," Chancellor Christian Stocker posted on X. Hungary may also be in play. Its parliament voted to quit the ICC in April, which could allow Putin to attend without risk of arrest. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has also remained one of the Kremlin's few friends in Europe amid the war, though that may make it less appealing to Kyiv. 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The Hill
40 minutes ago
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This conversation is being recorded: Trump's hot mic moment is the latest in a long global list
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'This is a big f———- deal,' then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden famously said, loudly enough to be picked up on a microphone, as President Barack Obama prepared to sign his signature Affordable Care Act in 2010. Obama was caught on camera in South Korea telling Dmitri Medvedev, then the Russian president, that he'll have 'more flexibility' to resolve sensitive issues — 'particularly with missile defense' — after the 2012 presidential election, his last. Republican Mitt Romney, Obama's rival that year, called the exchange 'bowing to the Kremlin.' 'Sometimes it's the unguarded moments that are the most revealing of all,' Romney said in a statement, dubbing the incident 'hot mic diplomacy.' Live mics have picked up name-calling and gossip aplenty even in the most mannerly circles. In 2022, Jacinda Ardern, then New Zealand's prime minister, known for her skill at debating and calm, measured responses, was caught on a hot mic tossing an aside in which she referred to a rival politician as 'such an arrogant pr—-' during Parliament Question Time. In 2005, Jacques Chirac, then president of France, was recorded airing his distaste for British food during a visit to Russia. Speaking to Putin and Gerhard Schroder, he was heard saying that worse food could only be found in Finland, according to widely reported accounts. Britain's King Charles III chose to deal with his hot mic moment with humor. In 2022, shortly after his coronation, Charles lost his patience with a leaky pen while signing a document on a live feed. He can be heard grousing: 'Oh, God, I hate this!' and muttering, 'I can't bear this bloody thing … every stinking time.' It wasn't the first pen that had troubled him. The British ability to poke fun at oneself, he said in a speech the next year, is well known: 'Just as well, you may say, given some of the vicissitudes I have faced with frustratingly failing fountain pens this past year.' Trump owns perhaps the ultimate hot mic moment The American president is famously uncontrolled in public with a penchant for 'saying it like it is,' sometimes with profanity. That makes him popular among some supporters. But even he had trouble putting a lid on comments he made before he was a candidate to 'Access Hollywood' in tapes that jeopardized his campaign in the final stretch of the 2016 presidential race. Trump did not appear to know the microphone was recording. Trump bragged about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women who were not his wife on recordings obtained by The Washington Post and NBC News and aired just two days before his debate with Hillary Clinton. The celebrity businessman boasted 'when you're a star, they let you do it,' in a conversation with Billy Bush, then a host of the television show. With major supporters balking, Trump issued an apology 'if anyone was offended,' and his campaign dismissed the comments as 'locker room banter.' On Monday, though, the chatter on both ends of the East Room press conference gave observers a glimpse of the diplomatic game. Dismissed unceremoniously from the White House in March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy now sat at the table with Trump and seven of his European peers: Macron, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finland's President Alexander Stubb, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Trump complimented Macron's tan. He said Stubb is a good golfer. He asked if anyone wanted to ask the press questions when the White House pool was admitted to the room — before it galloped inside. The European leaders smiled at the shouting and shuffling. Stubb asked Trump if he's 'been through this every day?' Trump replied, 'All the time.' Meloni said she doesn't want to talk to the Italian press. But Trump, she noted, is game. 'He loves it. He loves it, eh?' she said.
