ITALIAN prosecutors asked a judge at a court in Sicily today to drop human smuggling charges that they brought against four refugee rescue activists eight years ago.

Kathrin Schmidt, Dariush Beigui, Sascha Girke and Uli Troder were all crew members of refugee rescue ship Iuventa, which saved the lives of more than 14,000 people in the central Mediterranean between 2016 and 2017.

The Italian secret services began spying on the ship’s crew in September 2016, based on allegations from a security guard from another NGO ship with links to Italy’s far-right Deputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini.