They retreated to the council chamber, after brief replies from the prosecutor’s office and the defensethe judges of the Palermo court called to issue the verdict in the trial which sees the leader of the League Matteo Salvini accused of refusal of official acts and kidnapping. Salvini is accused of having illegitimately denied disembarkation in Lampedusa, in August 2019, to 147 migrants rescued at sea by the ship of the Spanish NGO Open Arms. The sentence is expected no earlier than 6pm.
The prosecution is represented in the courtroom by the deputy prosecutor Marzia Sabella and the prosecutors Gery Ferrara and Giorgia Righi who, last September 14th, at the end of the indictment, asked for Salvini to be sentenced to 6 years in prison. Some of the refugees held on board the Catalan ship are civil parties in the trial, including Legambiente, Arci, the AccoglieRete association, Giuristi Democratici, Ciss, Mediterranea Saving Humans, Cittadinanza Attiva, Oscar Camps, director of the NGO Open Arms, the commander of the ship that was prevented from docking, Reig Creus, and the head of mission Anna Isabel Montes, the Municipality of Barcelona, the Emergency association and Asgi (Association for immigration legal studies). The lawyers of the civil parties have asked for the defendant to be ordered to pay one million euros in compensation for damages. The hearing began on 15 September 2021. 24 hearings were held and 45 witnesses were heard. The Northern League leader is defended by the lawyer Giulia Bongiorno who asked for the acquittal of her client “because the fact does not exist”.
Video What happened to the Open Arms ship and what Salvini risks
Salvini: ‘I enter the courtroom proud, today is a beautiful day’
“I’m absolutely proud of what I’ve doneI kept the promises I made – he said Salvini before entering the bunker room of the Pagliarelli prison –I opposed mass immigration. Whatever the sentence, today is a good day for me because I am proud to have defended my country. I would do and do again everything I have done and I am happy with the demonstrations of affection that so many Italians are showing me. I enter the classroom proud of my work. I absolutely won’t give up.”
There is also the Minister of Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara, in Palermo. “I am here because I am a friend of Matteo Salvini to give him my closeness and my solidarity at this moment,” he told ANSA. Also in Palermo were Claudio Durigon, deputy secretary of the League, and the Northern League parliamentarian Alessandro Morelli.
Video Salvini: ‘I enter the courtroom proud, today is a beautiful day’
The trial with the replicas begins. Prosecutor Sabella: ‘The migrants had the right to get off’. Defense: ‘Public prosecutors pay attention to details, not to the general meaning’
THE ACCUSATION
“The migrants rescued by the Open Arms did not have the right to get off because they were sick, but because they were free men. In fact, Salvini is accused of the crime of kidnapping, not of injury. The problem is freedom, not health”, said the deputy prosecutor Marzia Sabella, public prosecutor at the trial, during brief replies.
“If a cruise ship can constitute a comfortable and yet fun temporary POS – he added – cruise passengers on board who find themselves unable to disembark in the absence of valid reasons are undoubtedly victims of kidnapping”.
“The disembarkation of minors was the responsibility of the Minister of the Interior, not of the Prefecture as the defense claims. And the minors had the right to disembark according to the SAR regulations”, continued the prosecutor.
“It is also incorrect, as the defense does, to attribute jurisdiction to Spain, the flag state of the Open Arms – continued the magistrate -. The law provides, in fact, that jurisdiction lies with the country in whose waters the vessel is located : in this case Italy”. Sabella denied that national security reasons justified the no to the landing.
THE DEFENSE
“The Prosecutor’s Office illuminates individual details, obscuring the general meaning. The prosecutor failed to respond to very serious facts highlighted by me during the speech”, said, replying to the Prosecutor’s intervention, the lawyer Giulia Bongiorno who defends the leader of the League Matteo Salvini. For Bongiorno, moreover, the prosecutor forgets that the redistribution agreement spoken of by former Prime Minister Conte, cited by the Prosecutor’s Office in the replies, was not finalized, “lacking the exact number of migrants whose responsibility the States should have assumed responsibility”. Finally, according to Salvini’s defense, the migrants were guaranteed food and shelter throughout their stay on the Open Arms.
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