A Gambian national, orphan claiming to have been victim of threats by his uncle, escaped to Libya where he claimed he had been kidnapped and tortured. The Tribunal of Salerno rejected the application for international and humanitarian protection. The tribunal considered that the reasons reported by the applicant were not relevant to subsidiary protection due to their private nature. The tribunal concluded also that the statements were contradictory and incoherent. 

The applicant appealed to the Court of Cassation, arguing that the tribunal omitted to consider his vulnerability as a condition for humanitarian protection to be granted. The Court of Cassation recalled its previous case law in which it was held that, for the purposes of granting humanitarian protection, a comparative assessment must be made between the applicant’s subjective and objective situation with regard to the country of origin and the integration situation achieved in Italy, giving the applicant’s condition in the country of origin a much lesser weight than the degree of integration that the applicant demonstrates that he has achieved in Italian society. The court also noted that human rights violations of particular seriousness in the country of origin can justify the right to humanitarian protection even in the absence of an appreciable level of integration in Italy. The court considered that the applicant was well integrated in the receiving country’s socio-economic environment (although in the form of apprenticeships and fixed-term work) but also took into account the applicant’s vulnerability (including the young age at the time of expatriation, the absence of family ties in the country of origin, the violence and torture suffered in Libya) to conclude that humanitarian protection could be granted.

The Court of Cassation overturned the previous decision, holding that the tribunal did not comply with the principles of attenuated comparison established in the Court of Cassation’s previous case law and of relevance of the disproportion between the contexts of life in the country of origin and in Europe. The court referred the case back to the Tribunal of Salerno to be examined in a different composition.