In August 2016, Italian authorities arrested and transported by bus around 60 Sudanese migrants from Ventimiglia to the hotspot facility at Taranto, where they immediately received return orders approved by the city prefect and ratified by the Justice of the Peace.

From Taranto, orders in hand, 48 migrants left the hotspot to begin the journey backwards, and by August 24 they were on a flight from Turin to Khartoum.

Deals with dictators

This event transpired because the head of the Italian Police, Franco Gabrielli, signed an agreement on migration with his Sudanese counterpart at the beginning of August 2016.

The memorandum of understanding with Sudan is just one of several agreements Italy has signed with the aim of simplifying the return of third-country nationals who are considered "illegal."

This specific agreement has been intensely contested, as Sudan is one of the world’s worst dictatorships.

The existence of this memorandum of understanding was only revealed at the end of August, after the wave of public indignation that followed the forced repatriation of 48 young refugees from Ventimiglia to Sudan.

Angelino Alfano, the Italian interior minister at the time, proudly claimed the legitimacy of the operation: "Violation of human rights? No, we merely observed an agreement between the Italian police and the Sudanese one."

But such agreement, which was never submitted to Parliament and whose content was only disclosed in October 2016, violates both Italian and international law. According to the Italian National Asylum Roundtable, it was a "completely illegitimate" agreement.

To Strasbourg

Sudan is among the 10 nations with the highest acceptance rates of asylum seekers, due to the difficult situation in the country.

The tensions in the country affect all Sudanese citizens, but prove particularly hard for those coming from Darfur, as this province is currently involved in an armed conflict that continues to cause mass displacements and civilian casualties, and during which all the parties have committed severe violations of human rights.

Despite the critical conditions of Sudan, Italy deemed those high-speed and low-guarantee returns perfectly acceptable. They did so despite the fact that, according to international law, such procedures are only allowable to so-called safe third countries - a definition that certainly does not include Sudan!

For these reasons, five Sudanese nationals have brought a case against Italy before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) alleging a violation of the non-refoulement principle with a country where fundamental rights are not safeguarded and people risk being subjected to inhuman treatments (a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights) as well as of the prohibition of collective expulsions (Article 4 of the fourth protocol of the Convention).

Such unsafe returns by Italy have already been condemned by the ECtHR: in 2012, the country agreed to mass repatriations to Libya after a deal was struck between Gaddafi and Silvio Berlusconi.

The sentence of the Strasbourg court will be particularly significant. Italy’s umpteenth conviction for the practice of mass returns to clearly unsafe third countries could serve as an important admonition to the government, which seems to need it, today more than ever.