Salvini updates book with 'Trial of an Italian'

(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 15 - Deputy Premier, Transport Minister and former hardline anti-immigration interior minister Matteo Salvini has updated his April book Controvento (Against the Tide) with two chapters entitled Trial of an Italian describing a case for which a Palermo prosecutor has requested six years in jail for allegedly kidnapping 147 migrants aboard the Spanish rescue ship Open Arms by refusing them permission to land for several weeks in 2019 as part of his controversial closed ports policy on NGO run rescue ships.
    "I tell you this incredible story," writes the leader of the anti-migrant League in a part of the 13 pages in which, a note explains, "he recounts what happened in the summer of 2019 and reiterates the many shady dealings in the conduct of the NGOs," which he and Premier Giorgia Meloni have accused of being "migrant ferries".
    "The trial," says Salvini, "it is good to remember, began because of the vote of Parliament. After the government crisis that had caused the break of the League with the 5 Star Movement (M5S), it was precisely M5S that had joined the left (including centrist former centre-left premier Matteo Renzi) to feed me to the judiciary.
    "A minister in the dock, not for stealing, but for respecting the electoral programme with which we had won the 2018 elections." (ANSA).