On 28 March 2026, seven years will have passed since Abdalla, Amara and Kader arrived in Malta. When they stepped onto the island in 2019, they were 19, 15 and 16 years old. Teenagers. Two still legally children. Today, they are young men in their twenties. And they are still waiting for their trial to begin.
What can happen in seven years?
A child can become an adult. A teenager can finish school, fall in love, choose a profession. A young athlete can train from amateur to elite. A start-up can grow into a billion-dollar company. Technology can transform the world twice over.
Seven years is the length of adolescence. Seven years is long enough for a personality to form, for a future to take shape. For the ElHiblu3, seven years have unfolded inside a courtroom calendar. This case is not just a legal process. It is a case about time and endurance, and what prolonged criminalisation does to young people.
The El Hiblu Incident – over 2500 days ago
On 27 March 2019, 100 people were rescued at sea by the tanker El Hiblu 1. The ship attempted to return the survivors to Libya, the very place they had fled. Those on board protested. They begged and demanded not to be sent back to a place where they knew to expect torture and death.
Abdalla, Amara and Kader helped translate and mediate between the scared travellers and the scared crew. Eventually, the tanker steered North towards Malta.
When the ship entered the islands’ territorial waters in the early hours of 28 March, Malta’s Armed Forces stormed it. No violent resistance was found. Still, the three teenagers were arrested and charged with several crimes, among them terrorism.
They were placed in a high-security prison wing for adults for 2 weeks before they got transferred.
After seven months in detention, Abdalla, Amara and Kader were released on bail. But, bail is not freedom. For seven years now, their lives have had no certainty about tomorrow. When you are 22 and still bound by charges first filed as a child, development does not simply pause, it warps.
Research on adolescence is unequivocal: identity formation, autonomy, risk-taking, education, and social bonding are central during these years. Chronic uncertainty and criminal labelling alter life trajectories. Even without conviction, the stigma of terrorism charges is socially corrosive.
Instead of building careers and lives, they build defence strategies. Instead of planning futures, they await procedural updates. Justice delayed is not neutral. It accumulates consequences.
Legal Limbo as Punishment
Even without a verdict, the process itself becomes a sentence. The question inevitably arises: what function does this prolonged prosecution serve? When young people are kept in prolonged uncertainty, the consequences are invisible but profound: chronic anxiety about the future, interrupted education, restricted mobility, limited prospects, social stigma, delayed independence…
Time, at that age, is not neutral. It shapes who you become. And while they wait, life elsewhere moves forward.
When Abdalla, Amara and Kader left Libya, they carried the ordinary ambitions of young people everywhere: safety, work, maybe study, maybe football, maybe something entirely different.
What they did not expect was to spend their formative years under the threat of life imprisonment.
The European border regime did not just intercept them at sea. It intercepted their adolescence.
And yet, they have not broken. They work. They show up. They endure. They build community.
Seven years have passed. Abdalla, Amara and Kader are now in their twenties, they remain suspended between accusation and resolution. Seven years is not an administrative delay. It is the length of an adolescence. It is the time in which a person becomes who they are.
Justice delayed is not neutral. It reshapes lives. How long can a prosecution be stretched before the procedure itself becomes punitive? Childhood shall not be something a legal system quietly swallows.
As the anniversary approaches again, the demand remains simple:
Translation is not a crime.
Survival is not hijacking.
Preventing an illegal pushback to Libya is not terrorism.
Free the El Hiblu 3!
On 28 March, the transnational campaign calls for actions. Join us in the mobilisation and be strong and loud together.
Reach out to get involved via mail@elhiblu3.info and amplify our voice on socials @elhiblu3
El Hiblu3 Campaign
