"Never in history has any government or minister been accused and tried for defending the borders of their country. Article 52 of the Italian Constitution states that the defense of the homeland is a sacred duty of the citizen. I declare myself guilty of having defended Italy and the Italians, I declare myself guilty of having kept my word ."
After the prosecutor's closing statement asking for a 6-year sentence for the Open Arms case , Matteo Salvini's defense speech arrives on social networks.
The story is well known: the then Interior Minister of the Conte government five years ago prevented the landing in Lampedusa of 147 migrants aboard the Spanish ship Open Arms , the Palermo prosecutors have asked to sentence him to six years for kidnapping.
According to the Palermo prosecutors, Salvini acted in 2019 not for a strategy agreed with the Conte government, as the defense claims, but for the interest of increasing his own electoral consensus by leveraging the fight against illegal immigration. According to the prosecution, there was no danger of terrorism on board the ship and therefore there was no need to protect the sovereignty of the State . Furthermore, the conditions of the migrants for that action worsened day by day.
Deputy Prosecutor Geri Ferrara, together with his colleague Giorgia Righi, stated that this is not "a political trial because it is clear that there is nothing political here: administrative acts such as the delay or denial of the assigned port for disembarking were evaluated ".
"There is a key principle that is not debatable: in our system, fortunately democratic, human rights prevail over the protection of the sovereignty of the State", Geri Ferrara underlined. " The person at sea must be saved and his classification is irrelevant : migrant, member of a crew or passenger, because according to the international law of the Sar convention even a trafficker of human beings or a terrorist must be saved, then if necessary justice takes its course".
Giorgia Meloni sided with the minister, being strongly criticized by the opposition: " Turning the duty to protect Italian borders from illegal immigration into a crime is a very serious precedent, my total solidarity with Minister Salvini ", said the prime minister. The Lega leader also received solidarity from Elon Musk, according to whom "that crazy prosecutor should be sentenced to six years" .
While waiting for the defense's reply scheduled for October 18, the lawyer Bongiorno accused the prosecutor of playing politics: "When he says that the technical table, the decrees and the directives are all unacceptable, intolerable and in conflict with human rights, he is actually putting the political line of that government on trial." The sentence is expected by the end of the year .
(Unioneonline/L)
