The Search and Seizure of the Iuventa.

A most unusual case for the Mediterranean passage: the rubber boat carried only two passengers, both Syrian. The Italian MRCC instructed us to take them on board and set course for Italy. We agreed, expecting to meet another north-bound vessel along the way and hand over the two rescued men so that we could return to the rescue zone. That would have been in line with standard procedure. Yet every ship we asked for assistance offered some implausible justification for refusing the transfer. After four days of waiting, the Iuventa was sent on another search, this time for a boat in distress south of Lampedusa.

The boat was never assigned an official case number, as standard protocol would require. We asked other ships in the area via radio whether they had been informed about the alleged distress call south of Lampedusa: no one had heard of it. We searched anyway. Moonbird, the reconnaissance aircraft operated by Sea-Watch and the Humanitarian Pilots Initiative, offered to join the search. Although the aircraft could have covered the search area within hours, the MRCC declined the offer. Instead, for the first and only time ever, we were ordered to follow a fixed search pattern. It was so tight, as if a boat could not be spotted from 100 metres away, and it was evidently calculated for a helicopter, not a ship: set and drift were not accounted for.

We had no choice but to follow this search pattern northwards, towards Lampedusa. By the time the MRCC called off the search, we were only a few miles from the island. We requested a rendezvous with a coastguard boat to hand over our passengers; it was refused. As soon as we entered territorial waters, we understood why. We had sailed straight into an ambush. Five Italian vessels surrounded us and ordered us into port.

In retrospect, much suggests that both distress cases reported by the MRCC had been fabricated in order to force us into port.

After our two passengers had been handed over during the night, the search of the ship followed the next morning. What made it legally possible was a fabricated allegation: we were said to have taken on weapons and explosives from a "ghost ship" months earlier, during a clandestine meeting at sea.

This was not a finding. It was a pretext. Article 41 of a 1931 public order law, still in force, allows immediate search and seizure if police have knowledge of undeclared weapons or explosives, "even on the basis of a mere clue". The allegation created the legal opening. It did not need to be true. It needed only to be made.

Dozens of officers, sniffer dogs and specialised cameras, live broadcasts on all major channels, leaked documents, and the crucial combination of buzzwords: "weapons," "migrants," "NGO ship" provided the spectacle. No weapons were found. No explosives were found. What the authorities discovered, and confiscated, were hundreds of life jackets.

More than 50 police officers searched the ship to no avail, acting on politically motivated instructions, incredulous themselves about their orders. One officer looked at me and said: "On days like this I hate my job, because the work you do out there is so important. You are not the sort of people they are trying to portray you as."

After the fruitless search, the interrogations began. Shortly afterwards, we were handed the seizure order for the Iuventa.