The Defence — Canestrini, Cancellaro and Gamberini
The extraordinary legal Team carried the Iuventa crew's defence through eight years of proceedings – and each brought something important to the case.
Francesca Cancellaro
Of Studio Legale Gamberini in Bologna, Cancellaro repeatedly confronted the prosecution's procedural conduct head-on. After the defence was forced to refuse to sign an interrogation transcript that misrepresented their clients' statements, she said: "The basic right to a fair trial has been denied to the defendant for the third time, showing that the prosecutor is not interested in knowing the factual background in order to decide if the case is worth for court."
At the acquittal in April 2024, she gave the moment its proper scale:
...an important starting point in the decriminalisation of solidarity. I consider it a starting point because there are still so many things to do.
Francesca Cancellaro's continued directly after the acquittal of the iuventa-crew into one of the most significant legal challenges to Article 12 of Italy's immigration law. In a separate case that became known as Kinsa, she secured a ruling from Italy's Constitutional Court in 2022 striking down key aggravating circumstances under Article 12, then went further still, obtaining a preliminary reference to the CJEU's Grand Chamber – a case ultimately ruled on in 2025. The same argument she had made in defence of the Iuventa crew – that the law was being used disproportionately, against the very people it claimed to protect – found its furthest legal expression here.
Nicola Canestrini
Founder of canestriniLex since 2001, Canestrini is admitted to practise before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He coordinates "Avvocati Minacciati" (Endangered Lawyers), an observatory monitoring threats against lawyers worldwide for their defence work, and serves as an international trial observer in proceedings against human rights defenders. In 2018, the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights (CILD) honoured him for his work protecting fundamental rights, "especially of the weakest, the poorest, the least protected, the last."
On the issue of translation rights, denied to the German defendants throughout the trial, Canestrini stated:
this should be determined by putting the rights of the defendant front and centre of every determination.
Alessandro Gamberini
A lawyer who has worked on some of the cases that defined modern Italian legal history — including the Ustica and Bologna massacre trials and the Uno Bianca case — Gamberini gave the closing argument for the defence. His verdict on the investigation's origins was blunt: "From the very start, the investigation against the NGOs was based on manipulations. It should have been closed four years ago. One has to ask why it wasn't."
The Iuventa ruling must restore honour to NGO rescue operations.