The judges of Palermo have acquitted this Friday Matteo Salvini in the ‘Open Arms case’ in which the vice president of the Government of Italy was accused of the crime of kidnapping people and omission of official acts, for having prevented the disembarkation for 20 days. of the 147 people rescued in the Mediterranean by the NGO Open Arms boat. The Prosecutor’s Office requested a sentence of six years in prison.
Deputy prosecutor Marzia Sabella, at the beginning of the hearing, had recalled that those rescued by Open Arms “did not have the right to disembark in Italy because they were sick, but because they were free men.” In the bunker classroom of the Pagliarelli prison in Palermo, Sicily, Salvini himself was listening to her, sitting on the bench, accompanied by his lawyer and also a senator from the League, Giulia Bongiorno, famous for having defended Giulio Andreotti in the trial. that saw him accused of mafia association and from which he finally emerged unscathed. Also in the room was the founder of Open Arms, Oscar Camps, who has led the accusation against Salvini, which has been joined by several organizations and two city councils, Palermo and Barcelona.
“I have kept my promises, fighting mass immigration and reducing departures, landings and deaths at sea. Whatever the sentence, for me today is a good day because I am proud to have defended my country. I would do it all over again,” Salvini had said before entering the bunker classroom.
Along the same lines, the now vice president of the Government of Italy had been preparing the ground for days so that the two scenarios – that of a conviction or that of an acquittal – would fit into his anti-immigration rhetoric. If convicted, he would be the victim of the “politicized judges”, if the hero was acquitted, guilty only “of having defended Italy”, as stated on the t-shirt shown by the leaders of the ultra parties, with Victor Orbán at the head, at the meeting. of the Patriots group on Thursday in Brussels. A day earlier he had received “the solidarity of the entire Government”, in a statement by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, during a speech in the Senate, which received applause from all members of the majority.
In any case, Salvini had made it clear that in the event of conviction he would not resign. “In Friday’s trial three judges have to decide, who I hope are not members of any party and who decide according to the norm,” he said a few days ago. “A sentence of even one month would mean a sentence for Italy. Resignation? Not at all, there would be more to go.”
A pulse that lasted 20 days
Three years after its beginning, the trial has thus concluded – the first in the history of the Italian Republic in which a minister was accused of actions carried out in the exercise of his office – of a case that began much earlier. Exactly on August 1, 2019, the day that Open Arms mission 65 carried out the first of the three rescues it would carry out in the central Mediterranean in what remained one of the deadliest migratory routes. Those were the days when Salvini, then Minister of the Interior of a Government formed by the coalition of the League and the 5 Star Movement, boasted of his “closed ports” policy, filling social networks with “anti-invasion” proclamations. .
And so began a pulse that lasted 20 days, with very high moments of tension and emergency evacuations of some of the 160 migrants who were on the deck of the Spanish NGO’s ship. The communication from the Ministry of the Interior with the decree banning entry into Italian international waters arrived on August 2. A veto that Open Arms appealed first before the administrative courts and then, while the situation on the ship became increasingly critical, before the Agrigento Prosecutor’s Office for crimes of omission of official acts and other crimes in relation to the situation.
Days before, and when a week had passed after the first rescue, the founder of the NGO, Oscar Camps, had written a letter to the Governments of Spain, France and Germany, asking them to help unblock the situation, with an agreement to the distribution of migrants once they disembark in Italy or Malta, the two countries that had denied entry. It took another week for six European countries, including Spain, to agree to welcome the migrants, without this serving to change Italy’s position.
The landing arrived on August 20by decision of the Agrigento prosecutor, Luigi Patronaggio, who, after visiting the vessel and seeing an “explosive and extremely urgent situation”, decreed its seizure and the disembarkation of all people on board. On the same day, and after weeks of uproar from Salvini and a motion of censure presented and then withdrawn by the League, the then Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte presented his resignation. Authorization by the Italian Senate to prosecute Salvini would come months later, already with a new majority in the Government.
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