The Palermo prosecutor asked the judge to indict Matteo Salvini for the “Open Arms” case. The request arrived in the late morning, on the second day of the preliminary hearing, which began with the spontaneous declarations of the former Minister of the Interior, who risks the process of kidnapping and omission of official documents. “Italy has never shirked, neither in this case nor in any other case, from the duty of providing all the assistance that was necessary to the people who needed it,” the former Minister of State said in his self-defense this morning. Indoor.
That for the “Open Arms” is a very similar story to that for the “Gregoretti” case for which the Gup of Catania still has to decide whether to indict the Northern League leader or not, despite the fact that there have already been five days of hearing and two more are planned. In Palermo today is the second day of preliminary hearing and probably also the last. Because the gup Lorenzo Jannelli will not have to, as his colleague from Catania Nunzio Sarpietro did, set hearings to hear witnesses. In this sense, the depositions of the former Prime Minister Conte, of the ministers Lamorgese and Di Maio in the Gregoretti case in Catania, could also be used in this preliminary hearing. Salvini’s defense asked for it, considering them in favor of the former head of the Interior Ministry; and the prosecutor did not object because it probably believes that they are useful for the prosecution’s theses. The prosecutors of Palermo, in the courtroom there is the same prosecutor Lo Voi, also asked to produce the decision of the UN Human Rights Committee of 29 January 2021 with which Italy was condemned for not having acted promptly in relation to a SAR event occurring outside the Italian territorial waters.
Salvini, accused of having banned the landing of 147 migrants rescued by the Open Arms in August 2019, claimed in spontaneous statements that “my mandate was characterized by results in terms of human lives saved and a decrease in the number of landings” and that the policy, according to him shared with the government, was to wait for agreements at European level for the redistribution of migrants, before assigning a “Pos”, a safe harbor, and making them disembark. A thesis that Salvini’s defense has already offered to the gup of Catania for the Gregoretti case: “The adoption of the security decrees, and in particular the security decree, is also part of the implementation steps of the political line – said Salvini – bis, which we approved at the Council of Ministers on 11 June 2019 and which provided for the power to order the ban on entry, transit and parking in the national territorial sea. These were measures adopted by the Minister of the Interior, as the national public security authority, in agreement with the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, according to their respective competences, informing the President of the Council of Ministers ”.
Salvini then reconstructed the Open Arms case from his point of view: «The commander of the Open Arms refused to tranship 39 migrants, in the Maltese SAR area, on a ship from Valletta. Days later, on 18 August 2019, the Spanish authorities assigned Open Arms a landing port in Algeciras. The commander refused this solution. Spain then gave availability at the nearest Spanish port (Palma de Mallorca) and Italy offered to escort the Open Arms with its own ship, where the migrants still on board could be transhipped. Spain also announced the sending of its own support ship. The commander also refused this solution ». Italy – underlined Salvini – has never shirked, neither in this case nor in any other, from the duty to provide all the assistance that was necessary to the people who needed it. Every time there has been a report of a medical need, Italy has done everything necessary to guarantee care and assistance ».
After the discussion of the prosecutors, at the end of which it was the same prosecutor Lo Voi who asked for the indictment of Salvini, word to the defense. So the GUP, which admitted a total of 21 civil parties including, just today, also the municipality of Barcelona, the city where the Catalan NGO, the municipality of Palermo and the NGO Emergency are based, will decide whether or not to indict Salvini.