In Italy, a Palestinian lawyer who fled Gaza builds Israel genocide case

Raji Sourani left the strip with his family as the war raged. He then joined colleagues in Sicily to try to take Israel to the ICJ.

Messina, Italy – Piles of court documents in English and Arabic filled the desk and covered the floor of Triestino Mariniello’s home office for much of March in Messina, a city in southern Italy overlooking Mediterranean waters on one side and the smoking Etna volcano on the other.

Here, far from the war, a team of lawyers from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCGR) in Gaza, to which Mariniello belongs, worked last month on their attempt to prosecute Israel for genocide.

“We thought it was a good way to try and be more productive in a place where you can actually detach yourself from the constant horrors, even though that may seem impossible these days,” Mariniello told Al Jazeera. “We also considered this as an opportunity for our colleague from Gaza to catch a breath after what he’s been going through.”

The PCHR legal team – including criminal prosecutor Mariniello and Chantal Meloni, an Italian professor of international criminal law at the University of Milan – is led by Raji Sourani, a Palestinian lawyer from the Gaza Strip and the director of the centre. They plan to take their case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

“I have two great Italian colleagues,” Sourani told Al Jazeera with a tired smile, still astonished to have made it to Sicily, a place that he said reminds him of home.