The former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has no doubts: “Never heard of terrorists on board the Open Arms”. Thus replies to the additional prosecutor Marzia Sabella. “Never heard of weapons or agreements between NGOs and smugglers, no one mentioned these circumstances to me”. In a nutshell, he immediately denied the proclamations of Matteo Salvini, who three years ago launched non-existent emergencies to prevent the 147 migrants aboard the Open Arms from disembarking, which is why today the then Minister of the Interior is accused in Palermo of kidnapping in person. Conte distances himself from his former government partner even when he talks about the security decrees: “Proponent was Salvini”. Instead, he claims a commitment to the redistribution of migrants in Europe. And he specifies: “Migrants could certainly land even before the process of redistributing quotas in Europe was completed”. Another distancing from the former Interior Minister. In those hectic days, the then Prime Minister Conte wrote to the owner of the Interior to disembark the “fragile subjects”: “Children in a critical situation could not remain on board”.
Salvini never looks at Conte, he keeps writing on his cell phone. Shortly before the start of the hearing, he even launched a photo from the bunker room (where journalists are forbidden to take photos and videos) on his social networks: as usual, grappling with his dossiers and the press releases from the Minister of Infrastructure . And with a vitriolic comment: “Today I am for the umpteenth time in Palermo, in the Ucciardone bunker hall famous for the maxi-trials against the mafia, for the Open Arms trial. I risk up to 15 years in prison for defending the ‘Italy and its borders, saving lives and enforcing the law”. He also comments: “Giuseppe Conte, Luigi Di Maio and Luciana Lamorgese are expected as witnesses for the prosecution, we will not be bored”.
Open Arms process, former ministers Trenta and Toninelli: “The ban on entry of the NGO was decided by Minister Salvini”
by Salvo Palazzolo, Claudio Reale
Across the courtroom is Oscar Camps, the founder of Open Arms. On Twitter he writes: “Sea NGOs have been investigated, defamed, hindered, blocked for seven years, yet so far the only suspect is the former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini”.
“The Climate of the Election Campaign”
Conte reconstructs the climate of those days: “I don’t remember the interlocutions with Minister Salvini. However, let’s talk about a logical deduction. We were in the announced phase of the government crisis, I would exclude a greater opportunity for dialogue given the climate that had established”. The former Prime Minister still attacks his then government colleague: “I was annoyed by the fact that a letter that was aimed at solving a problem had been circulated by the addressee without asking the sender for authorization – he adds – There was a incandescent climate with respect to an electoral competition that could be imminent and the intention was to represent a prime minister who was weak on the immigration phenomenon while the interior minister had a rigorous position, this was the political climate of that period”. And he reiterates: “I urged Minister Salvini to disembark the minors on board the Open Arms because in my opinion it was an issue that needed to be resolved after all. I tried to exercise a moral suasion on the matter because it seemed to me that the decision to keep them on board had no legal basis”.
Salvini’s defense goes to the counterattack: “Was your policy to achieve the objective of redistribution before the landing?” Asks the lawyer Giulia Bongiorno. Conte reiterates: “The optimal solution was an immediate response from Europe, but I have never argued, either publicly or privately, that without the redistribution of migrants, the pos could not be granted, that is, the safe haven”. Lawyer Bongiorno insists on the issue, reading a report dated August 25, 2018, on the “Diciotti” case, in which “you first attempted to relocate the migrants, once the attempt to relocate the migrants was negative, on August 25 the landing”. Conte says: “Even from reading that information, it does not seem to me that I said that the condition of the landing was that a redistribution take place”.