Italy’s Deputy Premier Salvini Not Guilty in Migrant Case
(Bloomberg) -- Italy’s Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini was acquitted over his role in preventing a rescue ship carrying 147 migrants from docking in Sicily in 2019.
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Salvini, the leader of the anti-migration League party and a junior partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition, had been facing a jail term of as much as six years.
“After three years, common sense has won, the League has won, Italy has won,” Salvini said after the verdict was announced. “The idea of defending the homeland, fighting against traffickers and protecting our children is not a crime but a right.”
Prosecutors had charged Salvini, who was the interior minister at the time, with kidnapping after he prevented the ship operated by the Spanish charity Open Arms from docking. The ordeal lasted about three weeks until a Sicilian prosecutor boarded the ship and ordered the migrants to disembark as sanitary and health conditions on the vessel had significantly deteriorated.
Salvini has reiterated over the years that he was following government policy to keep Italy’s borders secure. In a November interview with the daily newspaper “Libero,” he said that the trial was “a political responsibility of the left,” which, according to him, was seeking retribution.
Meloni said the ruling showed how “unfounded and surreal the accusations against” Salvini were, expressing “great satisfaction” for his acquittal.
In a post on Facebook before his hearing, he wrote: “I risk prison because the left wanted revenge. I would do it all again: Defending the borders is not a crime.” He has previously accused the judiciary of siding with the opposition.
Salvini had told reporters he was “proud” of what he had done just before entering the courthouse on Friday morning.
Meloni, who came to power in 2022, has sought to curb illegal migration, including through a long-delayed plan to reroute some asylum seekers to Albania. The initiative, expected to cost hundreds of millions of euros, is still not operational.
“It took us a while but we got there,” Salvini said. “I’ll push ahead with even more determination than before.”
(Updates with Salvini comment in the third, final paragraphs.)
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