Court
European Court of Human Rights
Decided
February 23, 2012
Docket
Application no. 27765/09; ECLI:CE:ECHR:2012:0223JUD002776509
Citation
ECHR 2012
Judge
Grand Chamber of seventeen judges, presided over by Nicolas Bratza. Judge Pinto de Albuquerque concurred.
Outcome
Relief granted
Disposition
By thirteen votes to four, the application struck out for two applicants who had died. Unanimously: the applicants “were within the jurisdiction of Italy for the purposes of Article 1 of the Convention”; violations of Article 3 “on account of the fact that the applicants were exposed to the risk of being subjected to ill-treatment in Libya” and “on account of the fact that the applicants were exposed to the risk of being repatriated to Somalia and Eritrea”; a violation of Article 4 of Protocol No. 4; violations of Article 13 taken with Article 3 and with Article 4 of Protocol No. 4; the government’s preliminary objections rejected. EUR 15,000 to each applicant for non-pecuniary damage, to be held in trust by their representatives, and EUR 1,575.74 for costs and expenses.
Nationality
Eleven Somali nationals and thirteen Eritrean nationals. Two of them died after the events (paragraph 15). Fourteen were granted refugee status by the office of UNHCR in Tripoli between June and October 2009 (paragraph 16).
Third country
Libya. Intercepted on 6 May 2009, taken to Tripoli on Italian military ships and handed over to the Libyan authorities, under bilateral agreements between Italy and Libya that had entered into force on 4 February 2009 (paragraphs 10 to 13). The Court also found a risk that Libya would send them on to Somalia and Eritrea.
The applicants were part of “a group of about two hundred individuals who left Libya aboard three vessels with the aim of reaching the Italian coast” (paragraph 9). On 6 May 2009, 35 nautical miles south of Lampedusa, ships of the Italian Revenue Police and Coastguard intercepted them; they were transferred onto Italian military ships and returned to Tripoli, where they were handed over to the Libyan authorities (paragraphs 10 to 12). The Minister of the Interior said that between 6 and 10 May 2009 “more than 471 irregular migrants had been intercepted on the high seas and transferred to Libya” under the agreements (paragraph 13).
The Court held that “in the period between boarding the ships of the Italian armed forces and being handed over to the Libyan authorities, the applicants were under the continuous and exclusive de jure and de facto control of the Italian authorities” (paragraph 81), and that “by transferring the applicants to Libya, the Italian authorities, in full knowledge of the facts, exposed them to treatment proscribed by the Convention” (paragraph 137).
It found a second violation of Article 3 in the risk of onward return: “indirect refoulement of an alien leaves the responsibility of the Contracting State intact” (paragraph 146). “It is a matter for the State carrying out the return to ensure that the intermediary country offers sufficient guarantees to prevent the person concerned being removed to his country of origin without an assessment of the risks faced. The Court observes that that obligation is all the more important when, as in the instant case, the intermediary country is not a State Party to the Convention” (paragraph 147).
And it found a collective expulsion: “the transfer of the applicants to Libya was carried out without any form of examination of each applicant’s individual situation” (paragraph 185), so that “the removal of the applicants was of a collective nature, in breach of Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 to the Convention” (paragraph 186).
Caution
The judgment decides Italy’s responsibility for people its own ships took to Libya and handed over. In S.S. and Others v. Italy, decided on 20 May 2025 (no. 21660/18), about an incident at sea off Libya on 6 November 2017, the Court declared the application inadmissible, holding that “the applicants were not under the jurisdiction of Italy within the meaning of Article 1 of the Convention” (paragraph 114). The Coalition’s page on Italy sets out both.
Pushbacks
Extraterritorial jurisdiction
Chain refoulement
Collective expulsion
Effective remedy
Article 3 ECHR
Bilateral agreements
The court's own text
Public copy
Read in full in the English text on HUDOC (item 001-109231) on 8 November 2026, with the Court’s press release of 23 February 2012; S.S. and Others v. Italy read on HUDOC (item 001-244024) the same day.
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