The Supreme Court yesterday allowed an Italian marine accused of killing two fishermen to return home pending a ruling on where he should be tried in a long-running case that has soured ties between the two countries.
Salvatore Girone and fellow marine Massimiliano Latorre are accused of shooting the fishermen while protecting an Italian oil tanker as part of an anti-piracy mission off the Kerala coast in 2012.
Latorre was allowed to travel back to Italy in 2014 for treatment after suffering a stroke.
But Girone has been barred from leaving India pending the resolution of a dispute between New Delhi and Rome over who has jurisdiction in the case.
Girone, who has been living in Italy’s embassy in New Delhi, will be home next Thursday, Italy’s Republic Day, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said in a tweet.
“We confirm our friendship with India, its people and its government,” said Renzi, who has been under pressure domestically to secure the provisional liberty of both marines.
“And we see welcome back to seaman Girone who will be with us on June 2.”
The Supreme Court yesterday agreed to alter Girone’s bail conditions allowing him to return, after a tribunal in The Hague ruled this month he should be free to go, pending the final outcome of arbitration.
“Having considered submissions of the parties, subject to conditions, the Italian marine Salvatore Girone’s bail conditions are modified,” Justices P C Pant and D Y Chandrachud said in a written judgment read out in court.
Italy initiated international arbitration proceedings in the case last year, referring the row to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague and asking it to rule on where the men should be tried.
Under his new bail conditions, Girone must return to Delhi within one month if the PCA rules that he face trial in India.
Girone also has to surrender his passport to the Italian government when he arrives and regularly report to police in Italy, his lawyer said.
The Indian government’s lawyers did not object to the marine’s request to go home and the Italian foreign ministry issued a statement “confirming our commitment to the conditions and formalities established by the Indian Supreme Court.”
The detention of the marines, the murder charges and the long wait for the case to be resolved are sore subjects in Italy, with Renzi regularly flayed by opposition leaders for failing to get both men home.
Italy insists the oil tanker, the MV Enrica Lexie, was in international waters at the time of the incident.
India argues the case is not a maritime dispute but “a double murder at sea,” in which one fisherman was shot in the head and the other in the stomach.
In December 2014, Rome threatened to withdraw its ambassador from India after a court rejected Latorre’s original request for medical leave.
Meanwhile Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan expressed the state government’s displeasure over the decision and blamed the central government.
Addressing reporters in Thiruvananthapuram, Vijayan who assumed office on Wednesday, said the state was “always unhappy” with the way the case was handled by the central government.
“We have made our position clear right from the time this incident occurred; things never went the way it should have. The Centre never pursued the case in the way it should have been taken up, and hence this has happened,” said Vijayan.
When the incident occurred the Oommen Chandy government was in office in Kerala, and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by Manmohan Singh was at the helm of affairs in Delhi.
The then Left opposition in Kerala had used the case politically, and frequently mentioned about the Italian connection in the case and the “soft corner” the then central government had.