“’Prison for Salvini’”, headline The Republic on Sunday September 15. “Public prosecutors: ‘Six years for Salvini’, the poster reads Evening Courier. This is in fact the sentence requested yesterday against the leader of the League (extreme right) in the trial brought by the Spanish NGO Open Arms, which the former Minister of the Interior had prevented from disembarking 147 people rescued off the coast of Libya in August 2019.
By blocking these migrants, who finally disembarked in Lampedusa after the intervention of the courts, Matteo Salvini, current Vice-President of the Council in Italy, was guilty, according to the Palermo prosecutor’s office, of “kidnapping of people” and of “refusal to perform acts within the scope of his function”, precise The Republic. “He had an obligation to allow disembarkation in a safe port and he did not do so,” prosecutors accused.
Meloni’s support
Salvini, who did not appear at the hearing, defended himself through social networks. “Six years in prison for preventing the landings and defending Italy and the Italians? Madness. Defending Italy is not a crime and I will not give in, not now and not ever. I declare myself guilty.” Claiming to be the victim of a political trial attributed to the left, the accused called on his supporters to mobilize and demonstrate in front of the court in October.
He received the support of the President of the Council herself, Giorgia Meloni: “Turning into a crime the duty to protect the Italian borders from illegal immigration is a very serious precedent,” said the leader of the rival far-right Fratelli d’Italia party.
The sentence requested on Saturday is “unprecedented”, underlines in the same vein the right-wing daily The Newspaper, who is worried about seeing it give way “a barrier” between justice and politics. “Whoever arrests illegal immigrants risks six years of misery,” headline on one another headline on the right, Libero.
Protection of human life at sea
In the eyes of Deputy Prosecutor Marzia Sabella, however, “We cannot invoke the defence of borders without taking into account the protection of human life at sea”, cite The Republic. A prince “which comes from the Odyssey, from ancestral times”, stressed another prosecutor, Gery Ferrara.
[…] - Courrier international
