The prosecutor’s office in the southern Italian city of Palermo on Saturday requested a six-year prison sentence for far-right Matteo Salvini for blocking the ship of the NGO Open Arms, with 147 immigrants on board. Salvini made the decision in August 2019, when he was Interior Minister, as part of his policy against irregular immigration.
Prosecutor Marzia Sabella demanded the sanction after a long argument, denouncing in her conclusions that the accused “was aware of the illegitimacy of his actions” and that “the conscious rejection” of the ship “violated the freedom of 147 people without any understandable reason”.
Salvini, currently vice-president of Giorgia Meloni’s government and Minister of Infrastructure, did not attend the court in Palermo despite the importance of the hearing in this trial in which he is accused of crimes of kidnapping and abuse of power.
This Saturday, the far-right Salvini party regretted the prosecutor’s decision and pleaded guilty to “defending Italy and the Italians.” The vice president defended on social media that “article 52 of the Italian Constitution declares the defense of the homeland as a sacred duty of the citizen. I plead guilty to having defended Italy and the Italians. “I plead guilty to having kept my word.”
Open Arms welcomes the prosecution’s request
Open Arms founder Óscar Camps expressed his satisfaction with the prosecutor’s request in a statement. “Today is an important day for Italian and European justice. The Open Arms case is a particular and unique case, different from the processes against NGOs: in this case, the disembarkation in Italy was voluntarily and arbitrarily prevented by the minister,” he said.
Camps stressed that during this process it was demonstrated first of all that the activities of the NGO were “monitored by the Navy, with a submarine, and transmitted to the Ministry of the Interior.”
“These recordings, made by a Navy submarine and presented during the trial hearings, show that there was no institutional intervention aimed at rescuing the people on board, but only the desire to film actions or omissions that could be imputable,” denounced the founder of Bras ouverts.
Sentencing in the trial is expected on October 18, after closing arguments by Salvini’s lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno.
Timeline of an impulse
The events date back to August 2019, when Salvini prevented the disembarkation of the rescue ship of the Spanish organization Open Arms with 147 immigrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea for twenty days, as part of his strict policy of closing ports.
The situation on board the ship has thus become critical, with dozens of immigrants waiting in the sun, among them several minors, the injured and people who have “drank sea water” or thrown themselves overboard in desperation, as the other deputy prosecutor, Giorgia Righi, recalled today.
On August 14, the administrative court of Lazio finally suspended the ban and the ship was able to enter Italian territorial waters, approaching the coast of the southern Italian island of Lampedusa.
Six days later, the prosecutor of Agrigento, Luigi Patronaggio, came on board to check the situation of the occupants and ordered their disembarkation and the confiscation of the ship.
That day, during the night, the Open Arms ship docked at the port of Lampedusa and finally disembarked 83 immigrants, the rest having been evacuated previously for medical reasons.
This is how Salvini’s first battle with the NGO ended, and then the battle began in the courts, when in July 2020 the Senate voted in favor of authorizing the process, given that the minister enjoyed immunity.
In recent months, Salvini has said his intention is to protect the borders and force a distribution of immigrants in Europe and has assured that his policy is “shared” by the rest of the government, a coalition between his League and the 5 Star Movement chaired by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
The prosecution’s case
Another Palermo prosecutor, Colagero Ferrara, argued in his speech that this trial “has nothing political” but aims only to judge “administrative acts.”
Similarly, he explained that since Salvini became head of the Interior, in June 2018, decisions on landings have been transferred directly to his cabinet: “It was the minister who decided, it is a key element,” he said.
In any case, he stressed that respect for those rescued at sea must come first. “According to international conventions, criminals and terrorists, whether presumed or real, cannot be abandoned at sea either. “They must be saved,” he said.
“There is a key and indisputable principle: between human rights and the protection of state sovereignty, in our system, the former must prevail,” he said.
His colleague Sabella also considered it “legitimately understandable” that Open Arms refused on August 18 to set up in the port proposed by Spain, Algeciras (south), because it was too far away, while it was already in front of Lampedusa, the closest port according to the laws of the sea.
“A revenge of the left”
The far-right politician did not attend the hearing in Palermo but raised the issue in an interview with the newspaper Libero, attributing the trial to “revenge of the left.”
“I face up to 15 years in prison for keeping my word to voters. I would do it again: defending the borders against illegal immigrants is not a crime. Go ahead, without fear,” he wrote on his social networks.
Her lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, who was present at the hearing, described the prosecution’s position as “a bit contradictory” because she saw “a political line” in it, she said during a media break.
The lawyer, who at the time of the events was Minister of Public Administration, will present her final plea on October 18 and the first degree conviction is then expected.
At the same time, the League, one of the three parties in Meloni’s coalition, organised demonstrations on the last two weekends of September as well as a demonstration on 6 October in its stronghold, the northern town of Pontida.
