Deputy Premier and Infrastructure
Minister Matteo Salvini said he risks 15 years in jail for
"defending Italy" on Friday as a hearing was held in his trail
regarding the Open Arms NGO-run rescue ship.
Salvini is accused of 'abducting" 147 rescued migrants on board
a ship operated by Spanish NGO Open Arms as part of his
closed-ports policy in August 2019, when he was interior
minister in the first of two governments led by ex-premier
Giuseppe Conte.
The Open Arms spent almost three weeks at sea after Salvini
refused to give the OK for it to dock on the island of
Lampedusa.
"Today I am in Palermo for the umpteenth time, in the bunker
hall of the Ucciardone prison, famous for the max-trial against
the mafia, for the Open Arms trial," Salvini said on Facebook.
"I risk 15 years in jail for having defended Italy and its
borders, saving lives and making the law be respected".
Conte, now the leader of the opposition 5-Star Movement (M5S),
former interior minister Luciana Lamorgese and former foreign
minister Luigi Di Maio were called as witnesses in the trial on
Friday.
Di Maio said that "everything that was done in that period (by
Salvini) was to obtain popularity".
The Open Arms stand-off took place shortly before League leader
Salvini pulled the plug on the first Conte government.
Conte said that, during the period of the stand-off, he "called
on Minister Salvini to let the minors on board the Open Arms to
disembark.
"In my opinion, it was a question that needed resolving aside
from everything else," he added.
"I tried to exercise moral suasion on the issue because it
seemed to me that the decision to keep them on board had no
judicial basis".
Last year Salvini was cleared in a similar case regarding
rescued migrants on the Gregoretti coast guard ship in July
2019.
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