Of
Giovanni Bianconi
The minister is accused of refusal of official acts and kidnapping of the 147 migrants who were left on board the NGO's ship in August 2019. The clash in the courtroom between prosecution and defense that speaks of a “political trial”
On 20 August 2019, when the then prosecutor of Agrigento Luigi Patronaggio boarded the ship Open Arms blocked in front of the port of Lampedusa and after a quick inspection ordered the disembarkation of all the people on board and the seizure of the vessel, the odyssey of 147 migrants ended and the legal affair began which today – Friday 20 December, five years and four months later – arrives at first instance sentence.
Salvini's Open Arms trial, live news
The alleged crimes
The prosecutor Patronaggio hypothesized the crime of refusal of official documents, but there was already a complaint for kidnapping: the two crimes of which the deputy prime minister and Minister of the Interior at the time (today again deputy prime minister, but Minister of Transport) Matteo Salvini. Who has always rejected the accusations, claiming that he had simply implemented the government's policy to “defend the national borders”.
But after the authorization to proceed granted by the Senate on 30 July 2020, this is no longer the subject of the dispute: the court presided over by Judge Roberto Murgia must establish whether crimes have been committed, as claimed by the prosecutors who requested the conviction of the accused a six years of imprisonment; any national interest that would have inspired the minister's action was set aside by Parliament's decision, which thus exhausted the political aspect of that case. The judicial aspect still stands before the court, the premises of which existed when the Open Arms was still sailing with migrants on board, waiting to obtain permission to dock in a safe port.
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Entry ban
On 1 August 2019, immediately after the vessel of the Spanish non-governmental organization had collected the first shipwrecked people off the coast of Libya, making the first request for a Pos (safe harbour) to Italy, the Conte 1 government supported by Lega and Cinque Stella issued a «ban on entry, transit and parking in territorial waters» signed by Salvini and his colleagues from Defense Elisabetta Trenta and from Transport Danilo Toninelli, both grillini. A decision taken on the basis of the security decrees passed the previous year by the same executive.
From that moment on, a tug-of-war with the NGO began and dragged on for another two weeksduring which Open Arms collected other migrants and refused the offers of Pos of Spain and Malta (only for the few dozen shipwrecked people rescued in the waters under its jurisdiction). Until he turned to the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio to request the suspension of the entry ban decided by the government.
On 14 August the TAR accepted the request and suspended the government's provision: a decision that makes this case different from all the others (the Diciotti and Gregoretti cases, to name two which ended up before other judges) and which triggered the accusation of kidnapping, supported by the Palermo prosecutors, starting from that date.
The correspondence with Prime Minister Conte
Between 14 and 20 August the government alliance between the League and Five Star broke down, both on a general political level and in the management of the Open Arms case; Salvini proposes to reiterate the entry ban, but ministers Trenta and Toninelli refuse to sign a new decree. In the meantime, the Palermo juvenile court hypothesizes violations and offenses against minors on board the Open Arms, and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte begins a correspondence with the Minister of the Interior in which he asks him to allow children and young people under 18 years of age to come down; Salvini accepts “in spite of himself”, as he specifies in his response, but the disagreements with the Prime Minister do not end there.
Conte informs Salvini that agreements are being reached with other European Union countries willing to host the migrants after disembarking in Italy, the objective with which the government had justified the “closed ports” line, therefore the Pos can be granted. But the owner of the Interior Ministry still doesn't want to know. Also because the majority that supports the executive is now irreparably split, and the government crisis is upon us.
I ministers witness
On August 20, Patronaggio brought everyone ashore and began legal proceedings against Salvini and other suspects (including his head of cabinet Matteo Piantedosi), which soon moved to Palermo because any crimes committed by ministers fell within district jurisdiction. After the first investigations, the Palermo prosecutor's office sends the documents to the court of ministers, which in turn carries out an investigation and in February 2020 asks the Senate (of which the minister, now former after the birth of the Conte 2 government, is a member) for authorization to proceed against Salvini, who remained the only suspect: Piantedosi and the others did nothing but fulfill his explicitly expressed wishes.
A year earlier the same request for the “Diciotti case” had been rejected, but this time the situation is different; supporting the new Conte government is a majority made up of Five Star and the Democratic Party which gives the green light.
Prosecutors: «Six year sentence»
In April 2021 the investigating judge orders the indictment and the hearing begins in October in the court. The prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi (current prosecutor of Rome) goes to the courtroom to lead the prosecution, flanked by the deputy Marzia Sabella and the substitutes Geri Ferrara and Giorgia Righi. In three years of hearings (very spaced out over time and convened only on Fridays, to give the accused-senator, who has since returned as a minister, the opportunity to be present in the courtroom) 45 witnesses were heard including former allies Conte, Trenta Toninelli and Luigi Di Maio, as well as Piantedosi who in turn became Minister of the Interior. And Salvini himself. All called to retrace the events of the time and provide a sufficiently clear picture to support the two opposing positions of the prosecution and the defense.
On the one hand the prosecutors, for whom Salvini made personal choices with the aim of self-promotion of his political lineincluding for electoral purposes, which resulted in “illegitimate and criminally relevant” administrative acts, aware of acting in contempt of all the rules of national and international law, thus distinguishing his responsibility from that of the government as a whole”. The minister denied respect for people's fundamental rights – to life, health, personal freedom – which prevail over all others; including the defense of borders by individual states. The refusal of official acts (the granting of the Pos due on the basis of international conventions and Italian law) is a crime that has generated multiple and aggravated kidnapping. Hence the request for a six-year prison sentence.
The defense: «Political trial»
On the other hand, the lawyer (and Northern League senator) Giulia Bongiorno, defender of the minister, according to whom it was not Salvini who kept the migrants kidnapped but the Open Arms organization itself, which aimed at bringing down one of his political adversaries through a blackmail. The ship had «countless possibilities for disembarking shipwrecked people» in Tunisia, Malta and Spain, but he “loitered” in the water because he wanted to dock only Italy, to put the “closed ports” policy in difficulty. And in any case, throughout the entire period in which Salvini legitimately pursued the government line shared up until then by the entire executive, the migrants on board the Open Arms were always assisted for all their needs, be they health or food, without running any risk. No refusal of due official acts, therefore, and no seizure, with consequent request for acquittal “because the fact does not exist”.
Two months have passed since that speech. Now all that remains is any replies and rejoinders, then the sentence.
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December 20, 2024 (changed December 20, 2024 | 10:30 pm)
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