League calls for resignation of migrant-ruling judge

(see related) (ANSA) - ROME, OCT 6 - Deputy Premier and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini's League party on Friday called for the resignation of Iolanda Apostolico, the Catania judge at the centre of a political storm for overturning a detention order against four Tunisian nationals being held at a Sicilian pre-removal facility amid claims of bias.
    On Thursday video footage from 2018 was published showing her at a demonstration against the closed-port policies of the government of the day implemented by then-interior minister Salvini.
    "She liked insults against Matteo Salvini posted by a comrade, and never denied it, and, embarrassingly, she was present at a far-left demonstration in a crowd insulting the police," the League said in a statement.
    "We now await her immediate resignation out of respect for all Italian people and the institutions".
    Sources in the court of Catania, on the other hand, said Apostolico would not be moved to another position after her controversial decision not to upheld a request for four Tunisians to be held at a pre-removal centre on the grounds that government legislation was illegitimate. On Thursday morning Salvini posted the video showing Apostolico and her partner at a protest organised at Catania port on August 25, 2018 to call for the immediate disembarkation of dozens of rescued refugees and migrants who had been kept aboard the coast guard ship Diciotti for over a week under his orders.
    Apostolico reportedly later told colleagues she had positioned herself between police and the demonstrators to try to prevent contact after earlier clashes.
    On Friday Salvini said the case was "a source of serious embarrassment for the institutions".
    Opposition parties, meanwhile, raised questions about why the video existed in the first place and called on Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi to explain.
    "The witch hunt unleashed by Salvini against the person of Judge Apostolico is really incredibly serious" and what happened on Thursday "deserves answers, which Minister Piantedosi must give", said centre-left Democratic Party (PD) senators Anna Rossomando and Walter Verini.
    "How did that video come out and from where? Who made it? Are there perhaps dedicated archives? The episode raises disturbing questions," they added. The opposition Five Star Movement (M5S) took a similar line.
    "The question we asked ourselves is how did the minister get hold of the video? Are demonstrators being profiled? Is profiling being used to gather confidential information? To fuel hatred and rancour against a magistrate who has taken a decision that this government does not like?" said M5S deputy Lower House whip Vittoria Baldino (ANSA).