MILAN (AP) – Italy's deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini He appears defiant as he awaits a decision on Friday in Sicily to block around 100 migrants at sea on a humanitarian rescue boat in 2019 when he was interior minister.
Salvini, who heads the Euroskeptic, anti-immigrant League, told a rally last week that “defending borders, dignity, laws, the honor of a country can never be a crime.” “
He has vowed to enter the court in Palermo with his “head held high” to hear the court's decision on whether he is guilty of detaining the migrants on board the Open Arms rescue boat on the southernmost island of Italy in Lampedusa for five days in August 2019. He is also accused of not fulfilling his public duties.
Trusted news and daily excitement, right in your inbox
See for yourself – The Yodel is the source for daily news, entertainment and feel good stories.
Prosecutors have asked for a six-year prison sentence. A sentence of more than five years would also automatically disqualify him from office. Whatever the conviction is on Friday, it will not have an immediate effect because decisions in Italy are only considered once two levels of appeal have been put in place, a process that can take years. .
In August 2019, Open Arms arrived in Italy with 150 migrants rescued at sea, some in the Maltese rescue zone, with Lampedusa the nearest port. They spent 10 days in international waters and a further five days within sight of Lampedusa, with those on board becoming increasingly confused amid deteriorating sanitary conditions. Some migrants threw themselves overboard, and small children were evacuated during a stopover.
Finally, a court ordered that the 89 people left on board be allowed to disembark in Lampedusa.
Open Arms' Italian lawyer, Arturo Salerni, dismissed Salvini's claim that he was defending Italy's borders, saying that as a public official he had a duty to protect the human rights of those on board.
“The main responsibility, especially those belonging to governments, is to protect international laws and conventions, and people's rights,” said Salerni, who represents Open Arms as an injured party in the lawsuit. “It cannot be that the interior minister … can take away anyone's freedom.”
The Open Arms stance was just one of more than 20 during Salvini's tough stance against migration when he was interior minister from 2018-2919 during the first government of former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. He closed Italian ports to humanitarian rescue ships and accused the groups that rescued migrants at sea of effectively encouraging smugglers.
In another incident, a German captain, Carola Rackete, entered the port of Lampedusa in June 2019 against Salvini's orders after declaring a state of emergency on her ship, the Sea-Watch 3, which had been carried 40 rescued people for about 16 days. She was quickly arrested. Italy eventually dropped charges of supporting illegal migration against her.
Now a transport minister in the far-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Salvini has the support of the prime minister and other ministers in the Palermo trial.
Since taking power in 2022, Meloni has moved to crack down on migrationstruck deals with north African countries in an attempt to curb departures while also setting up still-dormant centers in Albania aimed at investigating migrants who have been saved at sea in a country outside the EU without setting foot in Italy.
“Salvini will have the loyalty of the entire government,” Meloni told the Italian Senate on Wednesday, to a standing ovation from right-wing lawmakers.
____
AP visual correspondent Paolo Santalucia contributed from Rome.
