18 June 2017

Since the end of 2016, a growing campaign of delegitimisation and criminalisation has systematically targeted NGOs engaged in search and rescue, culminating in Summer 2017. On 2 August, the ship Iuventa of the German NGO Jugend Rettet (‘Youth Rescue’) was seized by the Italian judiciary under suspicion of ‘assistance to illegal migration’ and collusion with smugglers, concerning in particular an incident that occurred on 18 June in which the authorities claimed Youth Rescue had aided people smugglers by, among other things, returning their boats after rescuing the occupants. The video presented here offers a counter investigation of the authorities’ version of these events.