India’s top court on Thursday allowed an Italian marine accused of killing two fishermen to return home pending arbitration, the latest twist 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 India’s southern 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 which country has jurisdiction in the case. Girone has been living in Italy’s embassy in New Delhi.
The Supreme Court on Thursday 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 PC Pant and DY Chandrachud said in a written judgement 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. The Indian government’s lawyers have not objected in the Supreme Court to the marine’s request to go home.
The detention of the marines, the murder charges and the long wait for the case to be resolved are sore subjects in Italy, with Prime Minister Matteo 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.
The UN’s tribunal on maritime law on Monday ordered India to halt court proceedings against two Italian marines pending the international body’s ruling on the deadly 2012 case that sparked a diplomatic row.
Two Italian marines serving aboard an oil tanker as part of an anti-piracy mission allegedly fired shots that killed two Indian fishermen on a boat off India’s southern Kerala state.
India detained the two marines days later and a court case is pending, while Italy has challenged India’s jurisdiction and took its claims to the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
In a provisional order on Monday, the international court said: “Italy and India shall both suspend all court proceedings and shall refrain from initiating new ones which might aggravate or extend the dispute submitted” to it.
That in effect is a decision in favour of Italy, which demanded that India halt its judicial actions while awaiting the court’s final ruling.
But the UN court did not accede to Rome’s second request for both marines to be freed immediately pending a final ruling.
One of the servicemen, Massimiliano Latorre, was last year allowed to temporarily return to Italy for medical treatment and is still there. India in July granted Latorre another six months at home.
The other marine, Salvatore Girone, has been living at Italy’s embassy in New Delhi.
In opening statements, Italy’s Francesco Azzarello said the two marines had “not been charged with any crime” and had “protested their innocence throughout”.
He said the oil tanker, the MV Enrica Lexie, was in international waters at the time of the incident and accused India of an “unlawful exercise of jurisdiction over the incident, over the vessel and over the marines” whom it had arrested.
India however argues that the case is not a maritime dispute but “about a double murder at sea”, in which one fisherman was shot in the head and the other in the stomach.
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