All asylum requests of 43 migrants at
an innovative but controversial new Italian-run processing
centre in Albania have been rejected, officials said Thursday
after six of the original 49, two adults adjudged vulnerable and
four minors, were taken back to Italy.
A day after videoconference hearings with the Asylum Commission
to examine the process of the applications for international
protection, the response arrived Thursday and all 43 were judged
to be 'manifestly unfounded'.
The 43 migrants will now have 7 days to appeal the rejection of
their application.
For the Asylum and Immigration Committee, which is on the third
day of its mission in Albania with the parliamentarians of the
contact group for the monitoring of the Italian-Albanian
centers, "the Commissions clearly operate in continuity with the
manifest will of the executive to reject asylum seekers, in
contempt of international, European and constitutional law".
The Committee in fact denounces that "the people were not able
to seek legal assistance nor were they able to prepare for the
hearings with adequate legal information".
"We are faced - it underlines - with a procedure that is in fact
illegitimate due to the lack of protections provided by the
legislation in force".
This model, it adds, "has the sole objective of canceling the
right to asylum and continuing to propose a negative and
criminalizing image of those who arrive on our shores."
Meanwhile rulings on the legality under international law of the
migrants' detention, after two previous batches' detention was
ruled unlawful last year leading to the halt of the
much-trumpeted scheme, were postponed until Friday at Italian
courts of appeal.
The migrants are from Egypt and Bangladesh, two countries whose
territory was not wholly judge safe in the previous two rulings.
Rome has since updated its list of safe countries but the list
still includes the two countries.
The scheme has aroused international interest but condemnation
from rights groups.
The scheme has been costed at some 800 million euros over five
years and is estimated to be able to process 3,000 migrants a
month.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
