Italy’s defiant deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, defended his tough stance on illegal immigration in court on Friday, saying he made a “useful contribution” to preventing migrants from disembarking at Italian ports in 2019. Ta.
Salvini, leader of the far-right Alliance Party and current Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition partner, denies charges of deprivation of liberty and abuse of power over the August 2019 incident, which took place when he was in another government.
“What I did was completely conscious. I do not intend to shift my responsibility to others. I believe that I have rendered a useful service to my country,” Salvini told a court in Palermo, Sicily. He said this voluntarily. It lasted an hour.
Salvini was accused of using his position as interior minister at the time to detain 147 migrants at sea after refusing to allow them to disembark from a rescue ship run by the Spanish non-governmental organization Open Arms. , has been on trial here since October 2021.
If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
Salvini, 50, a hardline populist known for his “Italy First” policy, has repeatedly attacked illegal immigration to increase his political capital.
In 2019, during Giuseppe Conte’s coalition government, Italy implemented a policy of “port closure”, halting the entry of charity ships to rescue migrants making the often fatal journey from Africa across the Mediterranean to Europe. was rejected by Italy.
Mr. Salvini maintained then and now that Italy was protected by a security law designed to take tough measures against human traffickers who often organize crowded boats from North Africa.
In court on Friday, Salvini read out a series of official emails and documents that showed how the entire Italian government at the time, including Conte, was behind immigration policy and the decision to block the operation of a rescue ship operated by Open Arms. I tried to prove that he was there.
Salvini claimed that his policies had produced “results that could not have been achieved before or since, not only in terms of the fight against human trafficking, but above all in terms of lives saved.”
The policy, introduced between mid-2018 and mid-2019 when Salvini was minister, reduced the number of migrant landings by 90% and the number of migrant deaths by half, he told the court. Ta.
According to Interior Ministry statistics, around 120,000 migrants arrived on Italian shores in 2017, 23,400 in 2018 and 11,500 in 2019.
According to data from the United Nations Migration Agency, 2,337 migrants died or went missing off the coast of Italy and across the Mediterranean in 2018, compared to 1,885 in 2019, 1,449 in 2020 and 2021. There were 2,048 people.
―“There is no legal basis”―
The ship was blocked for nearly three weeks, until finally, following a court order, the migrants were allowed to disembark on the small island of Lampedusa.
Open Arms members testified that the migrants’ physical and mental health was at risk due to deplorable sanitary conditions on board, including an outbreak of scabies.
The passengers became so desperate that some jumped into the sea during the standoff, which made global headlines and drew condemnation from humanitarian groups.
The incident came amid a political crisis in Rome after Salvini defected from government in an attempt to trigger new elections in which he hoped to give his allied party the lead.
Instead, Mr. Conte formed a new coalition government, and in 2020 the Senate voted to strip Mr. Salvini of his parliamentary privileges, paving the way for him to stand trial in the Open Arms standoff case and another similar case.
The other case, in which Salvini was accused of refusing to disembark 116 migrants from Italy’s Gregoretti coast guard ship in July 2019, was dismissed by a court in Catania in 2021. .
Conte testified in the current trial that he called for unaccompanied minors to be evacuated from the Open Arms ship.
The former prime minister said he had tried to “morally persuade” Mr. Salvini and believed that “the decision to let him stay had no legal basis.”
The defense plans to begin the case next month.
Meloni, leader of the post-fascist Italian Brotherhood party, has also taken a hard line against illegal immigration.
Her coalition limits the actions of charity ships by forcing them to carry out one rescue at a time and assigning frequent disembarkation ports on the other side of Italy.
More than 157,000 migrants landed on Italian shores last year, up from 105,000 in 2022, Interior Ministry figures show.
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