CRIMINALISATION OF SOLIDARITY Former Italian mayor faces 13 years in jail linked to local inclusion policies Domenico Lucano, former Mayor of South Italy village Riace, has been sentenced in first instance to 13 years in jail on charges related to policies of inclusion of migrants he had implemented. In Riace, Lucano had put in place a model for welcoming and successfully including asylum-seekers while making the village thrive. This system was fiercely criticised by right-wing forces and later became the target of criminal prosecutions in line with broader attempts to delegitimise the Riace model. Lithuanian woman under investigation for helping Afghan asylum-seekers In Lithuania, a woman is currently under investigation for charges of aiding irregular migration after providing water, food and shelter to five Afghan asylum-seekers. The woman lives close to the border with Belarus, where migrants have been enduring violence, push backs and deprivation as both Lithuania and Belarus are failing to provide adequate protection and reception conditions. Frontex shuns protest from transparency activists In May, the European Parliament called on Frontex to drop its demand for legal fees from transparency activists who had sought information about its operations in the Mediterranean. Originally, Frontex had asked for 23,700€ in legal fees but the EU General Court decided to reduce it to 10,520 €. Frontex continued to seek 10,000€ in legal fees and as the deadline to pay was 4 October, the activists decided to bring the sum in cash to the agency’s headquarters in Brussels, as a protest. The activists were not received, as the building had been evacuated and was being surveilled by police.