Italian Justice This Friday, he acquitted the Italian Minister of Transport and Vice President of the Government, Matteo Salviniby deny the disembarkation of 147 migrants rescued off Lampedusa on board the ship Open Arms in 2019 during his term as head of the Interior.
The second criminal section of the Palermo court, chaired by Roberto Murgia, has announced the verdict after eight hours of deliberation. The Prosecutor’s Office had requested a six-year prison sentence, according to the news agency. AdnKronos.
The case dates back to August 2019, when the NGO Open Arms asked the Italian authorities a safe harbor where to disembark the more than 160 migrants – 27 of them minors – that he had rescued in three different operations carried out in the waters of the central Mediterranean.
The ship passed about twenty days at seaseven of them off the coast of the island of Lampedusa, as a result of a dispute with the Government and, in particular, with Salvini, who enacted a policy of ‘closed ports’ against the ships of the organizations operating in the Mediterranean.
Salvini has based his defense on the need to shield Italy from the irregular immigrationattributing a political nature to a trial that, according to him, calls into question whether a minister fulfills his duty. The Prosecutor’s Office, however, considers that the measure was exceeded and that there was no risk that justified blocking the migrants.
Iron fist against immigration
In the last decade, Matteo Salvini has been the toughest face against irregular immigration. The case that has put him in the dock has been the blockade of the ship of the Spanish NGO Open Arms in August 2019, when as Minister of the Interior in another Government, imposed its severe “closed ports” law to these organizations.
There were twenty days in which Salvini, then a member of the 5 Star Movement (M5S), left 147 immigrants on board the ship at the mercy of the sun and waves, until a prosecutor ordered their disembarkation on the island of Lampedusa. Salvini He has dedicated his life to politicsafter an unfinished time at the University in his youth, but he came to the fore in 2013, taking the reins of a party then called the Northern League.
The politician was in charge of renouncing the party’s old independence aspirations to turn it into a far-right force national. And it didn’t go badly: one term later, in the 2018 elections, his new League – simply, without the ‘north’ – went from 4% of the votes in 2013 to 17.36%, becoming the new star party on the right, surpassing the totemic Silvio Berlusconi.
Thus began his sweetest moment, but also, without knowing it, a future judicial ordeal. Those elections gave birth to the coalition government between Salvini and the populists of the M5S, headed by Giuseppe Conte, but the politician demanded, in addition to the vice presidency, the Ministry of the Interior: he wanted to control immigration.
Theirs are the so-called “Security Decrees”, which provided fines on ships who saved immigrants on the dangerous central Mediterranean route, accusing them of promoting the phenomenon. But also the aforementioned “closed ports” policy, by which he vetoed Open Arms and even military ships. Meanwhile, Salvini I was living a crazy summerwith parties on the beach among young people in swimsuits, mojito in hand, in the heat of some polls that elevated him.
Until one day, in an attempt to seize power, he decided break the coalition. But things did not go as he intended and his old allies from the Five Stars remained in coalition with the social democrats of the Democratic Party.
Salvini’s sweet days were coming to an end. The Prosecutor’s Office was investigating him for blockade of humanitarian ships and the new coalition not only dismantled its laws, a whole Damnatio memoriaebut in 2020 he withdrew his parliamentary immunity. Thus, in January 2021, the Palermo Court prosecuted him for the fight with Open Arms until this Friday, three years later, he was acquitted.
Meanwhile another match I overtook him on the right: the Brothers of Italy Giorgia Meloniwhich had taken over as an alternative force, being the only one that did not support Mario Draghi’s Government of national unity in the pandemic. Meloni would win the elections in September 2022, with 26% of the votes, while Salvini sank to 8%. But he resisted in power, in coalition with her, prime minister, and the conservative Forza Italia of the late Berlusconi.
Since then, Salvini, with a party that was electorally diminished but that he firmly controls, without major threats of succession, has been in the shadow of Meloni, queen of the far right, although maintaining his harsh tone. Now he serves as vice president and minister of Infrastructure and Transportation but, when it comes to distributing portfolios, he placed in the Interior who was his chief of staff during the years of his maritime struggle with the NGOs: Matteo Piantedosi.
Former admirer of the Russian president Vladimir Putinhas snatched Meloni some of his former partners in the European Union, joining the group ‘Patriots for Europe’ of the Hungarian ultranationalist Viktor Orbán or the Spanish Vox.
Salvini, vehement and omnipresent, also on social networks, has agitated his party in the face of the verdict and has presented himself as the victim of a judicial hunt, confessing the concern of his children Federico, 21, and Mirta, 11. Finally acquitted , the former captain You will be able to live a serene Christmas with your girlfriend and familydreaming of a future in which he will once again seduce Italians.
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