Open Arms: The PM asks for six years in jail for the minister, Matteo Salvini, who replies, “Guilty of having defended Italy.”

The accusation is serious:  In August 2019, Matteo Salvini, then Interior Minister of the Berlusconi government, prohibited the disembarkation of 147 migrants rescued by the Spanish NGO’s ship. After a seven-hour indictment, the Palermo prosecutors asked for a six-year prison sentence for Matteo Salvini, accused of kidnapping for having prevented the disembarkation in 2019, when he was Minister of the Interior. of 147 migrants from the Spanish ship Open Arms in Lampedusa. According to the accusation, the then minister acted not in the interest of national security but to increase his electoral support, illegally detaining migrants on board the ship in conditions that worsened day by day. “There is a key non-questionable principle: between human rights and the protection of the sovereignty of the State are the human rights that in our order. He had the obligation to provide a haven”. “There is a key non-questionable principle: between human rights and the protection of the sovereignty of the State are the human rights that in our order. He had the obligation to provide a haven”. And so Matteo Salvini risks six years in prison.

Open Arms, Matteo Salvini accused of kidnapping. According to the prosecution, Salvini did everything out of interest; his aim would have been to gain more consensus by exploiting the fight against illegal immigration. “At Open Arms – added the deputy prosecutor Giorgia Righi – the POS should have been released without delay and immediately, the denial was in contempt of the rules and not to continue a government plan”, and that “conscious and voluntary denial has damaged the freedom of each of the 147 people and there was no reason.” And those 147 people are the great absentees of this trial: “most of them are untraceable, but not because they are illegal immigrants or criminals, perhaps because they don’t have a home” said the prosecutors who also read their names as a sign of respect.

From Meloni to Elon Musk

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni immediately sided with Salvini and expressed full solidarity with the former minister: “Turning the duty to protect the Italian borders from illegal immigration into a crime is a grave precedent.” Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani also called the six-year request “unreasonable” and without legal basis, arguing that Salvini had fulfilled his duty as a minister.

For Matteo Salvini, the current Interior Ministry Tenant, Salvini’s possible conviction “is a clear and macroscopic distortion and an injustice for him and our country.” The Minister of Justice and former magistrate Carlo Nordio also intervenes—and this will make noise—to express “full and affectionate solidarity with my colleague Salvini.”