Second Catania judge frees migrants KOing govt decree

(ANSA) - ROME, OCT 9 - A second judge in Catania on Sunday night freed migrants striking down a recent government decree amid a row over the alleged bias of the first judge in the Sicilian city to do so last week.
    Judge Rosario Cupri did not uphold the detention of six Tunisian asylum seekers in a pre-removal centre (CPR) at Pozzallo, as his colleague Iolanda Apostolico had done regarding four Tunisians on September 29.
    Like Apostolico, Cupri reportedly ruled that new detention norms were against the Italian Constitution and international conventions.
    Apostolico has been attacked by government parties as allegedly biased after a police video emerged of her taking part in a demonstration in 2018 calling for migrants to be left off a Coast Guard ship after then interior minister Matteo Salvini had refused them the right to land in a controversial closed-ports policy for which he is currently on trial in Palermo.
    A second video has reportedly emerged showing Apostolico taking a more active part in the demo than shown in the first one.
    Salvini's League party have called for Apostolico to be sacked highlighting that the protesters were recorded called Salvini and others "murderers" and "animals".
    Apostolico says she acted as a "peacekeeper" to calm down the protesters.
    On Monday Catania Chief Prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro said Apostolico's 'media lynching" had been "deplorable", as all such trials by media were.
    photo: Apostolico in the 2018 video (ANSA).