MILAN (AP) — Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini sounded defiant as he awaits Friday’s verdict in Sicily for stopping about 100 migrants at sea on a humanitarian rescue boat in 2019 when he was interior minister .
Salvini, leader of the Euroskeptic, anti-migrant League, told a rally last week that “defending the borders, dignity, laws and honor of a country can never be a crime.”
He has vowed to hold his head high as he enters the court in Palermo to hear the court’s verdict on whether he is guilty of keeping the migrants on board the Open Arms rescue ship in Lampedusa for five days, the southernmost island of Italy, in August 2019. is also accused of failing to fulfill his public duties.
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Prosecutors have asked for a six-year prison sentence. A sentence of more than five years would also automatically remove him from office. Whatever Friday’s sentence will be, it will have no immediate effect as sentences in Italy are only considered final once two levels of appeals have been exhausted, a process that could take years.
In August 2019, Open Arms approached Italy with 150 migrants rescued at sea, some in the Maltese rescue area, with Lampedusa the nearest port. They spent ten days in international waters and a further five days within sight of Lampedusa, with those on board becoming increasingly agitated by deteriorating sanitary conditions. Some migrants threw themselves overboard and minors were evacuated during the standoff.
Ultimately, a court ordered that the remaining 89 people on board were allowed to disembark in Lampedusa.
Open Arms’ Italian lawyer Arturo Salerni rejected Salvini’s claim that he was defending Italy’s borders, saying it was his duty as a public official to protect the human rights of those on board.
“The supreme duty, especially of those belonging to governments, is to defend international laws and conventions, and the rights of people,” said Salerni, who represents Open Arms as an injured party in the lawsuit. “It cannot be that the Minister of the Interior… can deprive someone of his liberty.”
The Open Arms standoff was just one of more than two dozen during Salvini’s tough stance on migration when he was interior minister from 2018 to 2919 during the first government of former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. He closed Italian ports to humanitarian rescue ships and accused the groups that rescue 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 boat, the Sea-Watch 3, which was stationary for so’ n had transported 40 rescued people in 16 days. She was soon arrested. Italy eventually dropped charges against her for aiding illegal migration.
Salvini is now Minister of Transport in the far-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and has the support of the Prime Minister and other ministers in the trial against Palermo.
Since coming to power in 2022, Meloni has taken steps to crack down on migration, signing deals with North African countries in an attempt to prevent departures, while also setting up dormant centers in Albania to investigate migrants who were rescued at sea in the non-EU country. set foot in Italy.
“Salvini receives the solidarity of the entire government,” Meloni told the Italian Senate on Wednesday, after a standing ovation from right-wing lawmakers.
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AP visual journalist Paolo Santalucia contributed from Rome.
