Overview
- The Messina Court of Appeal, which on Monday accepted a request to review Faraj’s final conviction, also suspended his sentence and ordered his release from Palermo’s Ucciardone prison.
- The review hinges on testimony from the voyage’s self-described “captain,” who in a March hearing said the convicted men are innocent and described two Libyan organizers who packed the vessel and left no real crew on board.
- The first hearing in the reopened case is set for October 9, and lawyers for other men convicted in the same incident may now seek their own retrials.
- Faraj, now 31, was definitively sentenced in 2021 to 30 years for multiple homicide and aiding irregular migration after a 2015 crossing in which 49 people were found dead in the hold of a boat carrying more than 360 people.
- Revision of a final verdict in Italy is an exceptional remedy meant to correct grave judicial errors, and this case also spotlights criticism of how migrants labeled as “scafisti,” often simply people on the boat, are prosecuted compared with hard-to-reach organizers.