Salvini will be tried again for preventing the Open Arms ship loaded with refugees from docking in Lampedusa in 2019
Italy'sDeputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini , will be tried again in 2019 for managing the migration crisis in Lampedusa, which for weeks prevented a ship loaded with refugees from docking on the Mediterranean island, which kept him on trial until November last year.
A court in Palermo acquitted the then Minister of the Interior. The Public Prosecutor's Officehas announced that it will appeal the decision and the case will now be brought before the Supreme Court until the date of the new trial is set.
The ship of the NGO Open Arms was in front of the island of Lampedusa with more than 160 migrants, but was not allowed to dock until the prosecution decided against Salvini's position.
Salvini isone of the most well-known faces of the tripartite coalition of the ultraconservative government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and is also Minister of Transport and Infrastructure.
In particular, Meloni has described as "surreal persecution" the decision of the Palermo Public Prosecutor's Office to appeal to the Supreme Court the acquittal of Salvini for the blockade of the Open Arms, an NGO that has shown its "full confidence" in the justice system.
Salvini has thanked the Prime Minister for his support and reaffirmed his defence: "Defending Italy and its borders is not a crime. Trials of months or more? I go on with my head up, with the certainty that I have done my duty, without any fear."
For his part, theCatalan Oscar Camps , founder of Open Arms, has stated that "the facts were reconstructed very well in the first instance. We have full confidence in the work of the Public Prosecutor's Office.
Salvini, then Minister of the Interior, prevented the landing of 147 migrants rescued by the Open Arms ship for 20 days, until the Agrigento prosecutor allowed them to dock, after checking the condition of those rescued.
At the trial in Palermo in December 2024, Salvini was acquitted, for which the Public Prosecutor's Office requested six years' imprisonment .
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