>>>ANSA/Magistrates mull response to Salvini video slur

(ANSA) - ROME, OCT 5 - Magistrates were on Thursday mulling their response to what they described as a new attempt at "deligitimization" after Deputy Premier and leader of the right-wing League Matteo Salvini posted video footage dating to August 2018 and allegedly featuring a Catania judge now at the centre of a political storm after she ruled that parts of two recent government decrees on migrants were illegitimate amid claims of bias.
    Magistrates union ANM said it would "assess, together with the person directly concerned, whether and how to intervene" in relation to the video, which Salvini claims shows Judge Iolanda Apostolico and her partner at a protest demonstration at Catania port on August 25, 2018 against the closed-ports policy introduced under his tenure as interior minister, and specifically against the refusal to allow 190 rescued refugees and migrants to disembark from the coast guard ship Diciotti for several days.
    Apostolico drew strong criticism from the government and politicians at the weekend after she overturned detention orders against four Tunisian nationals being held at the newly-opened pre-expulsion centre (CPR) at the Pozzallo first reception centre, or hotspot, in Sicily under a new law providing for the detention of asylum-seekers from so-called safe countries of origin during the assessment of their claim on grounds it is unconstitutional and in breach of EU and international law.
    Premier Giorgia Meloni said she was "astonished" by the decision and the interior ministry said it would appeal against the ruling, amid allegations - based on social media posts - that the judge is biased.
    The row prompted members of the Italian judiciary's self-governing body CSM to present a request for a procedure to be opened to protect Apostolico.
    "Minister Salvini's initiative to share a video of the 2018 demonstration in Catania is intended to confuse the levels," said CSM councillor Roberto Fontana, one of the magistrates behind the protection move.
    "Jurisdiction is expressed through rulings, which can obviously be criticised and challenged on technical-legal grounds," he continued.
    However, "shifting the focus to the life of the magistrate and her possible activities outside the judicial sphere is a way to avoid discussion on the merit of the provision and an attempt to delegitimize judicial activity," Fontana said.
    However, Salvini returned to the matter later in the day, saying he was "dismayed" about the information emerging from the video.
    In a statement issued by the League , Salvini said the presence of Apostolico and her partner, "in turn an official of the Catania Palace of Justice, and publicly aligned against the League and on the side of the demonstrators" at the "protest organised by the extreme left at the port of Catania on August 25, 2018" is "a circumstance that reinforces the sense of the couple's total ideological alignment, even in the midst of a demonstration involving shouts of 'murderers' and 'animals' at Police".
    "There is an accentuated tendency to judge a judge's independence, which must be evaluated within the context of a trial, moving away from legitimate criticism of provisions towards personal screening, namely looking at who the judge is rather than at what he or she has written," said ANM President Giuseppe Santalucia during an interview with Sky.
    "I am concerned that this is a slippery slope," he added.
    In reply, the League said it was not "screening" judges for their private views but added that Italians should be worried about being judged by allegedly biased officials.
    "What has been happening in the last few hours is not a worrying screening of judges and their private lives as the ANM claims: we are faced with a public demonstration at the port of Catania and public posts of insults against Minister Matteo Salvini," said League sources.
    "Rather, the 58 million 851,000 Italians who may be judged by magistrates whose impartiality and third-party status are seriously compromised by the Apostolico case should be worried".
    However, Justice Minister Carlo Nordio on Wednesday ruled out a new institutional clash between politics and the judiciary.
    "No one wants to repeat the years of lead of conflict between politics and the judiciary," he said during parliamentary question time.
    The government and the judiciary have already come to blows on several occasions during the current parliament over decisions involving members of the cabinet and planned judicial reform.
    Asked by ANSA to comment on the video, Apostolico told ANSA on the phone "I'm at work and I can't talk". (ANSA).