Cutro, that’s who stopped the Coast Guard. “New rules dictated by the political level”

Rome – There is a document that certifies a disconcerting truth: the interference of the political level in the definition of the rules of engagement for interventions at sea in the context of the migratory phenomenon. Those rules of engagement to which, in front of the funeral home for the 94 victims of the Cutro shipwreck found, the then commander of the Crotone harbor master’s office Vittorio Aloi referred to to justify the failure of the Coast Guard to intervene to rescue the gulet Summer Love.

The document redefines operations at sea, gives priority to law enforcement operations conducted by the Financial Police, but – for the first time – expressly limits the intervention of the Coast Guard (the only body with suitable means and professionalism) to cases declared events Sar, i.e. search and rescue. In other words, only in cases of vessels at clear risk.

The new rules of engagement

So here is the document, taken from Marco Damilano’s program “Il Cavallo e la Torre”. It is an email signed by the captain of the vessel Gianluca D’Agostino, head of the national operational center and of the IMRCC (the search and rescue center of the coast guard) and sent to all the local harbor authorities. This is where, in black and white, the “political level” comes into play.

Captain D’Agostino writes: «Following inter-ministerial technical discussions, some tactical provisions for the financial police’s structures were given by the political level which, in fact, partly impose some reflections on our modus operandi. As of this date, the intervention activities of the naval units of the Coast Guard, in the event of events connected to the migratory phenomenon, must be developed in compliance with the following parameters”.

This is followed by a series of technical provisions which provide that, in fact, the intervention of the coast guard, both within and beyond 12 miles (limit of territorial waters), «can only be carried out by declaring a SAR event». Therefore, if a boat loaded with migrants is not classified as a SAR event (a classification which, moreover, is carried out precisely by the operations room of the search and rescue center in Rome), the coast guard patrol boats remain in port and the intervention is carried out by the police and is under the jurisdiction of the Financial Police.

Cutro, one year later: divided families, nameless bodies and broken promises

by our correspondent Alessandra Ziniti

February 23, 2024

The reconstruction of that night

Exactly what happened on the night between 25 and 26 February 2023 when, having received the report from the Frontex operations room of that gulet evidently loaded with migrants but never declared at risk of navigation despite the prohibitive weather, the vehicles of the Guardia di Finanza they went out to sea and then returned as the weather worsened while those of the Coast Guard, suitable for navigation in all types of weather, remained calmly in port. «We operated according to our rules of engagement which do not even come from our ministry (that of Infrastructure and Transport) but from that of the Interior. There would be a need to specify many things, you should know the rules that exist at an inter-ministerial level”, the words said in the immediate aftermath of the facts by the commander of the port authority Aloi (months later transferred to another position) which the officer never most wanted (at least publicly) to clarify. And now this document, dated seven months before the Cutro massacre, could well explain.

The consequences of the new provisions

The email signed by the captain of the vessel which gives an account of the new provisions “imparted from the political level” is dated 27 June 2022: these are the last weeks of the Draghi government of national unity in which the League participates. There is at the Ministry of the Interior Luciana Lamorgesehis deputy the Northern League member Nicola Molteni.

What these new provisions mean for operations at sea is clear. The political level modifies the organization of rescue at sea, making the intervention of the Coast Guard de facto discretionary and, by default, it has always gone out to sea everywhere and in any case without waiting for anyone’s permission and without ever conditioning its work on that of another police force, in this case the financial police.

Whether and how these provisions may have played a role in what happened on the night between 25 and 26 February will be assessed by the investigation into the failure to provide assistance by the Crotone Prosecutor’s Office, with six suspects between the Financial Police and the Coast Guard, now in the process of being ‘I arrive. The lawyers of some of the victims’ families have announced the filing of this document in the investigation documents.

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