The Open Arms rescue boat was kept from docking for three weeks with 147 migrants on board<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has been acquitted in a long-running case over his refusal to let a migrant rescue boat dock in Italy in 2019.<\/p>\n
Judges in the Sicilian city of Palermo cleared him of two counts of kidnap and dereliction of duty, after prosecutors had sought a jail term of six years.<\/p>\n
Salvini, who’s leader of the right-wing Lega party and a government ally of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, has always argued he was guilty only of wanting to “protect Italy”.<\/p>\n
“I have kept my promises, combating mass immigration and reducing departures, landings and deaths at sea,” he told reporters outside court on Friday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
On hearing the verdict, Salvini clenched his fists in a sign of victory and hugged his girlfriend, film producer Francesca Verdini, Ansa news agency reported. <\/p>\n
The trial began in September 2021, focusing on a case when Salvini, as interior minister, had sought to stop irregular migrants crossing the Mediterranean by blocking Italy’s ports.<\/p>\n
He had ordered an NGO ship called Open Arms to be prevented from docking on the island of Lampedusa after it had picked up 147 migrants off the Libyan coast.<\/p>\n
The Open Arms remained at sea for almost three weeks, and the health situation of the migrants on board seriously deteriorated. <\/p>\n
Eventually, the prosecutor in the Sicilian city of Agrigento, Luigi Patronaggio, ordered the vessel to be preventatively seized after inspecting it and noting the “difficult situation on board”.<\/p>\n
The captain of Open Arms and some of those rescued from sea were civil parties in the case, which began in September 2021.<\/p>\n
The three female prosecutors in the case have been under police protection after being harassed online and receiving threats.<\/p>\n
One of them, Geri Ferrara, told the court in September that human rights had to prevail over the “protection of state sovereignty”.<\/p>\n
“A person stranded at sea must be saved and it is irrelevant whether they are classified as a migrant, a crewmember or a passenger”, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Salvini maintained that the then-government of Giuseppe Conte had backed him fully in his mission to “close the ports” of Italy to NGO rescue ships.<\/p>\n
In recent months, the deputy prime minister had frequently referenced the trial and the forthcoming verdict in social media posts and during public speeches and interviews.<\/p>\n
PM Giorgia Meloni has stood by her deputy prime minister, saying he had her and her government’s “solidarity”.<\/p>\n
“Turning the duty to protect Italy’s borders from illegal immigration into a crime is a very serious precedent,” she posted on X earlier this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n
Reuters<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Matteo Salvini’s party has rallied around him ahead of the verdict<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
\n
After the verdict, the governor of the Veneto region and Lega party colleague Luca Zaia said justice had been done.<\/p>\n
“Salvini acted in the legitimate interest of our country and in full respect for his institutional responsibilities,” he posted on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Salvini had been criticised after he said the Italian judiciary was “politicised” and that some magistrates were “clearly following left-wing politics”.<\/p>\n
Elly Schlein, leader of the centre-left opposition Democratic Party, accused him of “spreading propaganda and fuelling a serious institutional clash”.<\/p>\n
Members of Salvini’s Lega party rallied around him. On Wednesday, Lega MEPs turned up at a European Parliament session in Strasbourg wearing t-shirts that read “Guilty of defending Italy” – a slogan Salvini has used in the past.<\/p>\n
Current Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said on Friday that whatever the sentence it would not affect the government.<\/p>\n
However, Lega deputy secretary Andrea Crippa had warned that a guilty verdict would be “like convicting the entire Italian people, the Italian parliament and the elected government”.<\/p>\n
Others outside Italy have waded into the debate too.<\/p>\n
“That mad prosecutor should be the one who goes to prison for six years,” Elon Musk tweeted, while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a close ally of Salvini, called the trial “shameful”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AFP The Open Arms rescue boat was kept from docking for three weeks with 147 migrants on board Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has been acquitted in a long-running…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[3587,3582,440,3581,3588,3585,3586,3583,3432,3584],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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