The bunker room of the Pagliarelli prison in Palermo, where the Open Arms trial took place. – ANSA
It all began in August 2019, when the alliance between the 5 Star Movement and the League was in government in Italy. Giuseppe Conte is Prime Minister and Matteo Salvini Minister of the Interior, but the government pact has been showing signs of weakening for some time. On the first day of August, over a hundred migrants were rescued in Libyan SAR waters by the Spanish NGO Open Arms. After the rescue, the crew of the boat requests the assignment of a safe port to Italy and Malta, the first of a series of requests which receives, in response, a clear ban on entry into Italian waters from the Minister of the Interior, which agreed the line with the Departments of Defense and Transport, then governed by five-star exponents. The affair turns into a sort of “arm wrestling”. Two refugees and a family member are disembarked for health reasons. 121 remained on the ship. Then, on August 9, the Open Arms lawyers appealed to the juvenile court requesting the disembarkation of the non-adult migrants and presented the first complaint. Then they rescue another group of people on a damaged piece of wood: 39 people. On 12 August the Palermo court orders the disembarkation of the minors. The ship heads towards Lampedusa and in the meantime sends requests for a safe port to both Malta and Italy.
The ruling of the TAR and the criminal investigation into the minister
After several no's from the Interior Ministry, Open Arms appealed to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, which suspended the entry ban on 14 August. More days pass and the NGO presents a complaint to the Agrigento Prosecutor's Office, noting the TAR's decision and asking for disembarkation because the migrants, now at sea since the beginning of August, are exhausted: someone has tried out of desperation to dive to reach the swimming island. On 20 August, after 19 very long days of back and forth, the then head of the Agrigento prosecutor's office Luigi Patronaggio went on board the ship to ascertain the conditions of the people rescued and spoke of an “explosive situation”, ordering the seizure of the vessel. After transfers for health reasons, there are still 88 migrants on board. The Agrigento Prosecutor's Office appears to be an investigation file, which leads to the Northern League Interior Minister being registered in the register of suspects for kidnapping and refusal of official documents, in collaboration with the then head of Cabinet, Matteo Piantedosi , now in turn head of the Interior Ministry. For jurisdiction, the papers are sent to the court of ministers, whose regional section is in Palermo, which ultimately archives Piantedosi's position, deciding to instead formulate the charge against Salvini.
The authorization of the Senate, the trial and the slew of witness ministers
In February 2020, the judges sent the documents from Palermo to Rome to ask the Senate – the chamber in which Salvini was elected – for authorization to proceed against him. In a similar case, concerning the Navy ship “Diciotti”, the assembly of Palazzo Madama did not grant it, but this time it does. In April 2021, the magistrate of the Palermo court Lorenzo Jannelli orders the indictment and in September the first degree trial begins, which will last for 24 hearings and which also saw the former Prime Minister Giuseppe sit on the witness stand Conte, the current head of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi and the former foreign minister Luigi Di Maio. Three years later, on 14 September, the final stages were reached, with the request of the Palermo Prosecutor's Office – represented in the hearing by prosecutors Gery Ferrara, Giorgia Righi and by the addition Marzia Sabella – for a six-year sentence for Matteo Salvini of detention in prison, motivating it with “the intentional and conscious disregard of the rules and conscious and voluntary denial of the personal freedom of 147 people”.
Salvini's version
For his part, during the hearings the Northern League leader himself, in some spontaneous declarations, stated that “the Government's policy was to combat the trafficking of human beings and to involve Europe”, asserting that from the beginning there was total agreement to part of the majority on the management of migratory phenomena and that Prime Minister Conte then decided to change his position only in mid-August, when the government crisis hit the news as the “Papeete” crisis had erupted. And again this morning, while awaiting the sentence, Northern League sources released a long note on the “case in brief”, which maintains that reading of the facts. The note claims that “the indication of the Pos (place of safety) was up to Spain or Malta (and certainly not to Italy) and the ship's commander deliberately refused the Pos subsequently indicated by Madrid, wasting precious time for the sole purpose to allow immigrants to disembark in Sicily as he had already done in March 2018, resulting in a trial for private violence and aiding and abetting illegal immigration”. Furthermore, it is stated that “the first countries contacted and informed by Open Arms after the rescue operations were Spain (country of flag of the ship) and Malta (area closest to the point of the rescues). Italy had no competence and no obligation with reference to all the rescues carried out by the Spanish ship Open Arms as they occurred entirely outside of its areas of relevance”. This is demonstrated, we read in the note, by “the exchange of correspondence between Valletta and Madrid in the first days of August 2019 regarding the Pos: there is a mutual passing of responsibility, but Rome is never mentioned”. According to the defense of the then Interior Minister, Open Arms should have immediately “headed for Spain, Malta or Tunisia”. Instead, we read in the Northern League's reconstruction, “the commander deliberately chose Italy as the place of docking and disembarkation”, refusing “a disembarkation of a group of migrants offered by Malta, which will then accuse Open Arms of “loitering” for the Mediterranean” and saying “no even to the POS granted by Spain on 18 August” and even refusing “the assistance offered by the Italian Port Authority which had said it was available to accompany the ship towards Spain, taking on board some Furthermore, Spain itself had sent the Audaz unit towards Lampedusa to provide assistance to the Open Arms (18 August). constitute the crime of kidnapping”. Finally, the note specifies “that the people on board were constantly looked after and cared for and that all people with proven medical needs were disembarked (a choice, moreover, which was not the responsibility of the Interior Ministry)”.
