Dozens of migrants back in Italy from Albania

The 43 migrants whose detention at a new Italian-run centre in Albania has been nixed by Rome's appeals court have been taken to the southern port city of Bari and transferred to the local Palese CARA hosting centre, CE Report quotes ANSA.

The migrants, all adult men from Bangladesh and Egypt, reached the Puglia port from Albania on Saturday night.

They were welcomed by health personnel and security forces, as well as by activists from the Arci association who denounced the "flop of the Albanian model", the government's new fast-track processing scheme for asylum seekers.

The migrants belonged to the third group taken to Albania as part the agreement between Rome and Tirana.

The group originally included a total of 49 people who were intercepted south of Lampedusa and taken to Albania last Tuesday by the Cassiopea Navy vessel.

Six were taken back to Italy earlier this week because they were minors or considered vulnerable.

The Rome appeals court on Friday night referred their case to the European Court of Justice to determine whether the countries of provenance of the migrants could be deemed safe, "when the substantial conditions for such a designation are not fulfilled for certain categories of people".

The scheme has so far been stymied by the courts.

Italian judges also refused to validate the detention of the first two groups of asylum seekers (totalling 20 men) taken to Albania back in October and November, under the agreement between Rome and Tirana, referring their cases to the European Court of Justice - which had established on October 4 that an applicant could not go through a fast-track procedure that could lead to their repatriation if their country of provenance was not deemed wholly safe.

The countries of origin in the cases, Bangladesh and Egypt, were not judged to be safe "over all of their territory".

The government has tried to get around this hurdle with a measure listing 19 safe countries for repatriation.

They included both Bangladesh and Egypt.

The government also stripped the immigration sections of ordinary courts which took the first two decisions not to validate detentions in Albania, putting them up to appeals courts instead, one of which ruled not to validate the detention of the third batch of migrants on Friday night.

The European Court of Justice is set to rule on the Italian courts' referrals on February 25.

On Saturday, interior ministry sources said the government will continue to fight irregular immigration by proceeding with its plan to process asylum applications in Albania as part of a scheme to create regional hubs that is backed by European partners.

The protocol between Rome and Tirana for the fast-track processing of asylum requests at Italian-run centres in Albania "is the starting point for the creation of real regional hubs on which there is full agreement with European ministers", the sources noted.

Under the government's plan, when up to speed the two Italian-run Albanian centres are set to process around 3,000 migrants a month.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has hailed the accord as a possible model for other countries, and there have been several expressions of interest.

And in an interview published on Sunday by QN, Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said the "fight against illegal immigration can't stop".

"We must promote regular" immigration and "absolutely oppose illegal" migration, he also said.

"We are convinced that we are right and so we are moving forward", Tajani told the paper.

Premier Giorgia Meloni's rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party MP Sara Kelany, who is in charge of migration in FdI, wrote in an article published by Il Giornale d'Italia on Sunday that the appeals court's ruling on Friday was "absurd, unjustified and able to create an impasse in the general management of irregular migration flows".

She accused magistrates of promoting "political ideologies" and of blocking a "model appreciated by all of Europe".

Meanwhile the centre-left opposition at the weekend continued to criticize the government's scheme, which members have slammed as an expensive and ineffective propaganda stunt.

The deputy president of the populist Five-Star Movement (M5S) Chiara Appendino said the government's migration policies "aren't working because in January we had over 3,000 arrivals".

She added that cabinet members "were in the hands of a criminal" whom "they freed and sent back home on a State flight", referring to Libyan judicial police commander Najeem Osema Almasri Habish and saying Italy relies on the north African country to stem the flow of migration towards its southern shores.

Almasri, the head of detention facilities including the notorious Mitiga centre, was arrested in Italy on January 19 on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes but released two days later on a technicality and flown back home on a secret services plane.

NGOs have long accused Italy of complicity in the long-documented abuse of migrants and refugees held in Libyan detention camps, as part of its agreement with Libya, forged in 2017 and renewed every three years to fight illegal immigration.

Meanwhile Ubaldo Pagano, a lawmaker from Puglia in the largest opposition member, the Democratic Party (PD) who was in Bari on Saturday evening when the asylum seekers arrived, said "managing migration policies is a serious business" but the government is "only promoting propaganda".

"We are here to witness this umpteenth failure and to take responsibility for human beings who are uselessly transported between Italy and Albania, even separated from family members", he said on Sunday, slamming the new scheme as a "national shame".