Italy's biggest trial against migrant rescue NGOs halted for third time amid lack of interpreters

euronews.com:

Italy's trial of migrant rescue NGOs involved in saving thousands of people from drowning between 2016 and 2017 is still struggling to make a start on, five years after it was initiated.

Twenty-one people – including the crews of the Iuventa search and rescue ship and members of several NGOs including Sea Watch, Save the Children and Médecins sans Frontières – stand accused of having colluded with human traffickers to allow for the unauthorised entry of migrants into Italy between 2016 and 2017, in what is the country's biggest trial against sea-rescue charities.

One of these 21 people is Dariush Beigui, who in the summer of 2016 was on board the Iuventa as a member of the German NGO Jugend Rettet. In that summer alone, the ship is estimated to have saved 2,000 people from drowning in the Mediterranean, according to the NGO.

Until the ship was seized in 2017, the Iuventa crew helped save the lives of 14,000 people, according to Amnesty International.

A total of 181,436 migrants landed in Italy in 2016, and 119,310 in 2017, according to Italian authorities.

Beigui, like his colleagues, stands accused of "aiding and abetting unauthorised entry into Italy" and could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to €15,000 per person that was rescued if found guilty.

He has always rejected the accusations, as did his colleagues and the other NGOs involved, saying that their intervention was necessary to save human lives in danger. Under international maritime law, a vessel is obliged to aid people in peril at sea. But the Sicilian prosecutors say the refugees and migrants rescued by the Iuventa were not in "imminent danger."

Beigui is having a few issues getting questioned by the Italian court in Trapani, Sicily, where his case is