ROME: Six members of Italy’s police and coast guard go on trial Friday over a 2023 shipwreck that killed at least 94 migrants, accused of failing to intervene on time.

The disaster off the southern Calabrian coast was Italy’s worst in a decade and set off a firestorm of criticism against far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s tough stance on the thousands of migrants who arrive by boat each year from North Africa.

Thirty-five children were among those killed when the boat crashed on the rocks off the coast of the tourist town of Cutro on February 26, 2023.

Four officers from Italy’s Guardia di Finanza (GDF) financial crimes police and two members of the coast guard are standing trial in nearby Crotone.

They are accused of involuntary manslaughter and “culpable shipwreck,” a crime in the Italian penal code punishing negligent actions or omissions leading to a shipwreck.

The overcrowded boat had set sail from Turkiye carrying people from Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Syria. Around 80 survived.

Dozens of bodies washed up along the beach, their coffins later filling much of a nearby sports hall — brown wood for the adults, white for the children.

Authorities say more people may have perished in the shipwreck, their bodies never found.

’Negligent’
The charges against the officers relate to a search-and-rescue operation that never came, despite the boat having been tracked for hours.

A plane from European Union border agency Frontex had spotted the vessel in difficulty some 38 kilometers off the coast and flagged it to Italian authorities.

But a boat subsequently sent by the GDF police turned back due to the bad weather, and the migrant boat eventually capsized on rocks near the beach.

Prosecutors accuse the police of having failed to communicate key information to the coast guard, while the coast guard members allegedly failed to collect details from police that would have alerted them to the situation’s urgency.

Liborio Cataliotti, a lawyer for defendant Alberto Lippolis from the GDF — who ran the air and naval command center from Calabria’s other coast — told AFP his client was “very calm” heading into trial.

He said his client is being held responsible for subordinates not having provided more information.

All those on trial worked from various control centers far from the site of the shipwreck.

More migrants feared dead

Charity groups that operate search-and-rescue boats in the Mediterranean, including SOS Humanity and Mediterranea Saving Humans, are civil parties to the case.

They say the tragedy points to the policy of Meloni’s hard-right government of treating migrant boats as a law enforcement issue rather than a humanitarian one.

Human Rights Watch’s acting deputy director for Europe and Central Asia, Judith Sunderland, said it was not only the individual officers on trial, but also “Italian state policies that prioritize deterring and criminalizing asylum seekers and migrants over saving lives.”

Visiting Cutro after the tragedy, Meloni put the onus for the disaster squarely on the shoulders of human traffickers, announcing toughened penalties for those who cause migrant deaths.

Two men accused of trafficking the migrants on the boat, one Turkish and the other Syrian, were sentenced to two decades in prison in 2024.

In December that year, two Pakistanis and a Turk were convicted by a court in Crotone for their lesser roles in managing the migrants on board, with sentences from 14 to 16 years.

Around 66,000 migrants landed on Italy’s shores last year, a similar number to 2024, down from more than 157,000 in 2023, according to Italian government officials.

But many lost their lives trying to make the journey.

At least 1,340 people died while crossing the central Mediterranean last year, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM).

On Monday, the agency said it feared for the lives of over 50 people missing after a shipwreck off the coast of Libya during the recent Storm Harry.

Days earlier, one-year-old twin girls were reported missing after their boat hit bad weather crossing from Tunisia to Italy.