Musk's Albania intervention splits Italian politics

(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 12 - Elon Musk's condemnation of Rome judges who nixed the detention of a second batch of migrants subjected to Italy's controversial policy of taking migrants to be processed in Albania on Tuesday split Italian politics into supporters and critics of the world's richest man and top Trump supporter's intervention.
    As a result of the Rome judges' decision the seven migrants, who are citizens of Egypt and Bangladesh, were brought to the Italian port of Brindisi early on Tuesday.
    On October 18, the same court failed to validate the detention of 12 migrants who were part of the first group to be taken to Albania under the government's controversial agreement to run migrant-centres on Albanian territory.
    "These judges need to go," said Tesla, X and SpaceX owner Musk via X on a user's post on the news of the suspension of the validation of the detention of seven migrants decided by the immigration section of the Court of Rome, which also referred the case to the European Court of Justice, which has ruled that neither Egypt nor Bangladesh are wholly safe.
    Musk was a big supporter of Donald Trump's successful US Presidential election campaign and he looks set to hold a powerful position in the new administration.
    It is the second time the outspoken multi-billionaire has spoken out on Italian migration.
    Last year Musk slammed Germany's policy of helping charities that rescue migrants and take them to Italy's shores.
    Among those who welcomed Musk's apparent call for the judges to be removed from their posts was rightwing League party leader, Deputy Premier and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, who had on Monday described the ruling as "another political sentence against Italians," as he had characterised the previous similar ruling as the work of allegedly politically motivated "Communist" judges acting against the interests of Italians and the safety of their borders.
    Salvini, who is the subject of a Palermo trial in which he is accused of kidnapping 147 migrants by refusing to let them off a Spanish NGO run rescue ship in Lampedusa for 19 days five years ago as part of his controversial closed ports policy a then hardline interior minister, said Tuesday: "Elon Musk is right.
    On December 20, I could receive a 6-year prison sentence for having blocked, as Minister of the Interior, the landings of illegal immigrants. Seen from abroad, all this seems even more incredible." But a minor ally of Premier Giorgia Meloni's rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party and the League, Maurizio Lupi of the We Moderates group, said: "Elon Musk's words are inappropriate because, even from abroad, they fuel a clash with the judiciary that the Center-Right does not want." FdI bigwig Fabio Rampelli said: "Judges who oppose our repatriation policy are wrong. Both because they exceed their duties, both because they politically interpret the ruling of the European Court of Justice which says something completely different, both because the States should speak to supranational institutions and not the courts".
    But he added: "However, we are equipped to defend ourselves. We thank Elon Musk but we are not like the left, which drools to amplify Italian critical issues at an international level, ridiculing the nation. We will know how to make our reasons prevail and this further attempt to favor immigration by the left and certain magistrates will make us rise even further in the consensus of Italians".
    The centre left was predictably highly critical of the tech tycoon's intervention.
    MPs Angelo Bonelli of the Green-Left Alliance (AVS) and Andrea Casu of the centre-left Dempcratic Party, the biggest opposition group, asked Meloni to intervene.
    "An unacceptable interference and a serious problem for democracy," said Bonelli.
    "The Prime Minister is called to defend the Constitution and democracy attacked by Musk" who "is in fact Trump's right-hand man".
    "Musk's attack on Italian judges is an intolerable interference," said Casu.
    "It is essential that the Prime Minister intervene and demonstrate whether she is defending national sovereignty or whether she is silently accepting this attack".
    Italian Left (SI) leader Nicola Fratoianni said "I don't know if the government will worry about defending sovereignty and borders from Musk's interference this time".
    Meloni said after Trump's stunning comeback victory in which the tycoon gave out a million dollars a day to prospective supporters that Musk is "an added value and potential interlocutor".
    On September 23 Musk presented Meloni with the 'Global Citizen Award 2024 from Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, praising her as "someone who is even more beautiful inside than outside".
    Musk said Meloni had done "an incredible job" as prime minister with "record growth and employment".
    "She is someone who is authentic, honest, truthful", added the billionaire during a ceremony at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Manhattan.
    Thanking Musk for his "precious genius", Meloni delivered a passionate defence of Western values.
    Pictures of the pair enjoying each other's company forced Musk to deny suggestions they might be having an affair. (ANSA).