More than two and a half years have passed since that fateful February 15, 2012, when the ordeal for the two naval riflemen Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone began. More than 900 days during which, with rare exceptions, the national media have sipped the news as if to follow a timeline preordained outside the newsrooms.
From the return to Italy of Massimiliano Latorre for a period of convalescence of 4 months following a serious illness that hit him in Delhi, silence has become absolute. Only rare and repetitive declarations by top representatives of the Defense and Foreign Affairs to reassure that what was necessary was prepared to start an international arbitration which, however, was not yet formalized to give space to a diplomatic action not better clarified .
Today suddenly the curtain of silence rises not on the initiative of the Italian media but for an Ansa agency from Delhi with which we are informed that India is evaluating the Italian proposal for a "consensual" solution. " of the problem. The Economic Times and high-level Indian government sources report that the government has decided to hold a meeting "soon" chaired by security adviser Ajit Doval to study the solution offered by Rome to resolve the crisis.
We note that, as in the past, Italians to be updated must refer to the Indian press and it is always the government of Delhi to give news, almost never the Italian one. In this case, in fact, we are talking about the examination of a solution to the case proposed by Rome, a hypothesis unknown to Italians because they were considered, perhaps, by the State as unreliable and therefore not deserving of a democratic information.
A choice that is difficult to share. I would dare to say offensive against the hundreds of thousands of citizens committed to keeping the attention on the fate of the two navy riflemen and worried that Italy has once again surrendered the right to exercise its sovereignty by delegating a third State to exercise undue legal action.
The obscurantism, however, justifies any allegation, so let's try to hypothesize and propose a couple of what could be the Italian solutions proposed to India, through an analysis of what has happened in these 900 days.
The first, an Italian proposal to exchange the 18 Indian sailors recently stopped in the Sicilian channel aboard a ship loaded with 40 ton. of drugs, applying a bilateral agreement signed to that effect in August 2012. Solution that would present to the world the two Italian soldiers as common criminals.
A second and perhaps the most realistic solution could be the one that Italy has decided to follow the ?? road map ?? proposed for some time by the Deputy Foreign Minister Lapo Pistilli, when on May 16, 2013 at the Forum of Mediterranean Journalists he declared that "At the moment the collaboration with the Indian authorities is excellent. The rules of engagement have already been agreed for the judgment that the Indians are preparing to give on the two riflemen, as well as the conditions following a sentence have already been agreed. This allows me to say - added Pistelli - that the affair has started correctly and we are just waiting for it to end " .
In both cases, however, the possible conclusion of the affair would not represent an Italian diplomatic victory. Rather the umpteenth ?? solution to the ?? Italian ?? which would guarantee the return of the two soldiers to their homeland for the maximum satisfaction of their families and themselves, but at a very high price in terms of the image of the interested parties and of the entire country. Assumptions that could have been avoided only by respecting the constitutional constraints on extradition and not exercising against them, however, on 22 March 2013 against them ?? a ?? 'passive extradition ?? in favor of India.
An exchange of prisoners, in fact, would take for granted the involvement of the two marines in a criminal act and, even worse, the second solution would represent an umpteenth transfer of national sovereignty when Italy, renouncing its prerogatives guaranteed by international law, would prefer to agree with India a shared judicial action instead of demanding that India respect the functional immunity of the two soldiers guaranteed to them by treaty law and the provisions of UNCLOS ( United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) ratified internationally by Delhi.
The two navy riflemen would return to Italy and this would be the real success but the price to pay would be very high.
The two soldiers would return, in fact, in the homeland deprived of the dignity they would be entitled to and for Italy in the eyes of the world would be another Pyrrhic victory.
Fernando Termentini
