(AP) A court in Italy on Friday ruled against the right-wing government’s move to detain 12 migrants at newly opened centers in Albania, highlighting a key hurdle in the administration’s plan to outsource some of its migrant processing to the Balkan country.
The 12 migrants were part of the first batch of 16 migrants to be sent to the two centers that opened last week under a five-year deal to host 3,000 migrants per month picked up by the Italian coast guard, to vet them for possible asylum in Italy or to be sent back to their countries.
However, each migrant’s detention must be reviewed by special migration courts in Italy under Italian law, and on Friday a court in Rome rejected the detention of 12 of the migrants arguing that they cannot be sent back to their countries [of] origin — Bangladesh and Egypt — because the court did not deem the countries to be safe enough.
