Decisions

European Court of Human Rights May 20, 2025 Third country: Libya. Two of the applicants, R.J. and E.R.O., remained on the Libyan ship Ras Jadir; they said the crew bound them with ropes, beat and threatened them, and that they were taken to a detention camp in Tajura, Libya, where they were ill-treated. They were later returned to Nigeria under the voluntary humanitarian return programme run by the IOM (paragraph 15). The other fifteen were taken to Italy by the rescue ship Sea-Watch 3 (paragraph 16).

Disposition Unanimously, the Court decided “to strike the application out of its list of cases in so far as it concerns the applicants I.A., E.E.A., E.K., V.M and J.O.”, with whom their representatives had lost contact (paragraph 17), and declared “the remainder of the application inadmissible”. It held that “the applicants were not under the jurisdiction of Italy within the meaning of Article 1 of the Convention in respect of the facts complained of under Articles 2, 3 and 4 of the Convention and Article 4 of Protocol No. 4” (paragraph 114). The decision was notified in writing on 12 June 2025.

At 6.15 a.m. on 6 November 2017 the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Rome received a distress signal from the dinghy, thirty-three nautical miles north of Tripoli; the coordination centre in Tripoli instructed the Libyan ship Ras Jadir to direct the rescue (paragraphs 5 to 8). According to the applicants, the Libyan ship’s manoeuvres caused the death of several people, who were flung into the water, and its crew struck those in the water with ropes and threatened them with weapons; Sea-Watch 3 pulled dozens aboard and recovered the dead, among them the sons of S.S. and R.J. (paragraphs 11 and 13). The Court found that Italy did not control the area: its support to Libya under the 2017 agreements, which included vessels such as the Ras Jadir, did not mean that “the international maritime area off the Libyan coast was under the effective control and decisive influence of Italy” (paragraphs 94 and 97). Nor did Italian agents control the applicants: “none of the ships involved in the rescue operation was flying the Italian flag or was under the de facto control of Italian agents” (paragraph 101), and “the mere fact that the search and rescue procedure was initiated by the Rome MRCC cannot have resulted in bringing the applicants under the jurisdiction of the Italian State” (paragraph 106). The Court added that “all the reports in its possession from international bodies and NGOs demonstrate that, at the material time, asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants in Libya were at risk of torture, slavery and discrimination, such that the situation in that country was no more favourable than it was found to have been in the Hirsi Jamaa and Others case” (paragraph 109), and that “problems with managing migratory flows cannot justify having recourse to practices which are incompatible with their obligations under the Convention” (paragraph 111).

Pushbacks Extraterritorial jurisdiction Search and rescue Bilateral agreements Outsourcing of migration control Article 3 ECHR

Caution The decision turns on jurisdiction and does not decide whether the events breached the Convention; the facts are as the applicants submitted them (paragraph 3). It distinguishes Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy (see that entry), where the applicants were on Italian military ships. The Court said that the situation “is nonetheless governed by other rules of international law, in particular those regarding the rescue of persons at sea, the protection of refugees and State responsibility” (paragraph 112). The decision was adopted in French; this entry quotes the English text on HUDOC.

European Court of Human Rights February 23, 2012 ECHR 2012 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.

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.

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).

Pushbacks Extraterritorial jurisdiction Chain refoulement Collective expulsion Effective remedy Article 3 ECHR Bilateral agreements

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.