2024-09-17 10:41:22
Because he prevented migrants from disembarking from an aid ship in 2019, Italy’s right-wing nationalist deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini is to be sentenced to six years in prison, according to the public prosecutor’s office.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, Italy’s right-wing nationalist deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini is to be sentenced to six years in prison for blocking a rescue ship with migrants on board. “The public prosecutor’s office has requested that former interior minister Salvini be sentenced to six years in prison,” said the lawyer for the aid organization Open Arms on Saturday. Salvini must answer in the trial for allegations of deprivation of liberty and abuse of office.
In 2019, as then Interior Minister, Salvini denied the rescue ship “Open Arms” with 147 migrants on board entry into the port of Lampedusa for six days. As a result, he has been on trial in Palermo, Sicily, since October 2021. The “long and difficult process” is now nearing its end, Open Arms’ lawyer Arturo Salerni told the AFP news agency. A verdict could be announced next month.
Salvini was not present at the hearing on Saturday. He wrote on Facebook afterwards: “Six years in prison for blocking arrivals and defending Italy and the Italians? Madness.” At the same time, he added: “Defending Italy is not a crime.” Even before the prosecutor’s demand for punishment, he had declared: “I would do it all again.”
The head of the right-wing nationalist Lega party is deputy to the ultra-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in the current Italian government. Meloni criticized the online service X: “It is unbelievable that a minister of the Italian Republic is risking six years in prison for doing his job in defending the country’s borders, as required by the mandate received from his citizens.”
In August 2019, Salvini refused to allow the rescue ship “Open Arms” with 147 migrants on board to enter the port of Lampedusa for six days. The migrants were only able to leave the ship after the Italian public prosecutor’s office ordered them to do so. In his justification, the Lega leader pointed out that the decision was not made by him alone, but by the government at the time. He also wanted to protect Italy from an influx of migrants with his restrictive policy of “closed ports”.
Prosecutor Geri Ferrara, on the other hand, had explained before the court in Palermo that there was a central principle that was “completely indisputable”: “Between human rights and the protection of state sovereignty, human rights must take precedence in our fortunately democratic system.”