They ruled that a recent European Court of Justice ruling on the way EU states designate "safe" countries meant the migrants from Bangladesh and Egypt did not meet the criteria for detention in Albania.
Rome has repeatedly boasted that multiple EU states are interested in the scheme as a way to process asylum claims in countries outside the bloc, and Brussels is watching closely.
But just days after the plan went into effect on 14 October, the first group of migrants sent to non-EU Albania will have to leave again..
Judges ruled on the detention of a dozen men from Bangladesh and Egypt who were picked up in the Mediterranean and transferred from an Italian warship.
On 16 October, they arrived at one of two Italian-run migrant centres in Albania.
The court said a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice meant the men did not meet the criteria for detention in Albania and would instead have to be brought to Italy.
Meloni's Italian Brothers party condemned the "politicised judges", writing in X that the ruling made it "impossible" to return the illegal migrants.
This is the second blow to the controversial scheme, after it emerged this week that four of the 16 migrants initially transported were "vulnerable" and should instead be sent to Italy.
Opposition leader Eli Shlain, head of the centre-left Democratic Party, said they knew the judges would rule against detention "not because we are clairvoyant, but because we read the laws".
"Tear it all down and apologise to the Italians," she told Meloni, adding that "the agreement you made with Albania, far from being a model, violates international, European and national law". | BGNES
