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CRIME

Italy’s former interior minister Salvini stands trial for migrant kidnapping

Italy's former interior minister and far-right leader Matteo Salvini went on trial on Saturday for allegedly illegally blocking 147 rescued migrants from disembarking from a rescue ship and holding them in dire conditions.

Published: 23 October 2021 13:14 CEST
Updated: 23 October 2021 14:44 CEST
Salvini stands trial on migrant kidnapping charges.
Salvini stands trial on migrant kidnapping charges.. Photo by PEDRO ROCHA / AFP

Salvini attended the opening hearing in Sicily’s Palermo, which came a month after it was first postponed.

The hearing was expected to be largely procedural, with Judge Roberto Murgia expected to decide on the admissibility of witness lists sought by both sides.

Salvini, the leader of the far-right League party who is known for an “Italians first” policy, is charged with kidnapping and abuse of office for using his position as interior minister to detain the 147 migrants at sea in August 2019.

READ ALSO: Italian mayor who helped migrants gets 13-year prison sentence

On the opening day of trial in Palermo, prosecutors asked that they be allowed to question Salvini, who was present in court, on the stand.

The hearing, which came a month after the trial was first postponed, was largely procedural and lasted less than three hours before Judge Roberto Murgia set the next hearing for December 17th.

If convicted, Salvini could face a maximum of 15 years in prison.

The 48-year-old has said that the decision was not his alone, but agreed by the government, including by the then-prime minister, Giuseppe Conte.

Prosecutors have asked that the witness list include Conte, as well as Italy’s current Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese and Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio.

Judge Murgia said US actor Richard Gere would be allowed to take the stand as a witness, as requested by civil party Open Arms, the Spanish charity that operated the rescue vessel.

The actor had boarded the ship in solidarity with the migrants before it docked at the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi had earlier told the court the actor’s presence was not required as it would create “spectacle” and there were more qualified witnesses.

Salvini tweeted a photo of himself inside the courtroom, standing in front one of the cells used for some defendants.

“This is the courtroom of the Palermo prison. The trial wanted by the left and by the fans of illegal immigration begins: how much will it cost the Italian citizens?” he tweeted.

Outside the courtroom, the founder and director of the Spanish charity Open Arms that operated the rescue ship said the trial was not politically motivated.

“Saving people isn’t a crime, but an obligation not only by captains but by the entire state,” Oscar Camps told journalists.

READ ALSO: ‘More rights and more humanity’: Italy overhauls anti-immigration security decree

The beginning of the trial came as 406 migrants rescued in various operations off the coast of Libya by the German charity ship Sea Watch 3 arrived at the Sicilian port of Pozzallo to be disembarked.

Salvini’s claim to the ‘closed ports’ policy

In the 2019 Open Arms case, migrants were finally allowed to leave the vessel after six days, following an order by the prosecutor’s office. A subsequent onboard inspection revealed serious overcrowding and dire sanitary conditions.

Salvini has staunchly defended himself, saying he was protecting the country with his “closed ports” policy, which aimed to stop people attempting the dangerous Mediterranean crossing to Italy.

Italy’s Senate voted last year to strip Salvini of his parliamentary immunity, paving the way for the trial.

A related case in which Salvini, 48, was accused of blocking other migrants at sea on an Italian coastguard boat was thrown out by a court in Catania earlier this year.

According to prosecutor Andrea Bonomo, Salvini “did not breach any international convention” in his treatment of the migrants, and acted with the support of his government, ANSA news agency reported.

On Friday evening before Saturday’s court hearing in Palermo, Salvini tweeted that migrant arrivals continue in Italy, adding, “we need to block the landings”.

Salvini’s League takes a hard line on migrants, arguing that Italy bears an unfair burden as the first point of entry into Europe for those arriving from northern Africa.

When he blocked the ships, Salvini was part of a coalition government and held the positions of interior minister and deputy prime minister.

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CRIME

Italy remembers anti-mafia judge Falcone on 32nd anniversary of bombing

Italy on Thursday paid tribute to anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, who was killed by the Sicilian mafia on May 23rd, 1992, in a car bomb murder that shocked the country.

Published: 23 May 2024 11:30 CEST
Italy remembers anti-mafia judge Falcone on 32nd anniversary of bombing

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano were in Palermo on Thursday morning to attend the inauguration of the Museo del Presente (‘Museum of the Present’) – a new museum focusing on the legacy left by Falcone and his colleague Paolo Borsellino, who was also killed by Cosa Nostra in 1992.

Authorities in Palermo were set to lay a wreath outside the city’s Pietro Lungaro police station at 1pm to honour the memory of the three escort agents who were killed in the attack. 

Another official ceremony was set to take place in the late afternoon in via Notarbartolo, in front of Falcone’s former Palermo residence, with participants expected to observe a minute of silence at 5.58pm – the exact time of the 1992 bombing.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella, whose brother Piersanti was murdered by the mafia in 1980 while serving as Sicily’s regional president, said in a statement on Thursday morning that the Capaci bombing was an outright attack “on Italian democracy” which sparked a nationwide “mobilisation of conscience” . 

He said that the names of those who were killed in the bombing are “etched in our history with indelible characters” and serve as “a statement of commitment to a conclusive victory over the mafia cancer”.

READ ALSO: How murdered judge Giovanni Falcone shaped Italy’s fight against the mafia

The life lessons taught by Falcone and his colleagues have demonstrated that the “mafia can be defeated and is bound to end” but “it is necessary to keep our guard up” to prevent mafia associations from “taking root in grey areas” of the state, Mattarella added.

Italian Judge Giovanni Falcone (2nd-L) arrives in Marseille, France

Italian Judge Giovanni Falcone (2nd-L) arrives in Marseille, France, in October 1986. Photo by GERARD FOUET / AFP

Mattarella’s words came just two days after former Carabinieri General Mario Mori was placed under investigation in connection with a series of mafia bombings that killed a total of 10 people and injured 40 more in 1993.

According to prosecutors in Florence, Mori had been notified of plans from the Sicilian mafia to carry out attacks in multiple locations around Italy, including Florence, Rome and Milan,  but failed to both give the “due warnings and notifications” and carry out “pre-emptive investigations”.

The Capaci attack was the first in a series of car bombings orchestrated by the Sicilian mafia from May 1992 to July 1993.

The mob used a skateboard to place a 500-kilogramme (1100-pound) charge of TNT and ammonium nitrate in a tunnel under Sicily’s A29 motorway, which linked the Punta Raisi airport to the centre of Palermo.

Falcone, driving a white Fiat Croma, was returning from Rome for the weekend. At a look-out point on the hill above, a mobster nicknamed ‘The Pig’ pressed the remote control button as the judge’s three-car convoy passed.

The blast ripped through the asphalt, shredding bodies and metal, and flinging the lead car several hundred metres.

Falcone, his wife, and three members of his police escort were all killed instantly.

Less than two months later, on July 19th, Falcone’s colleague and close friend Paolo Borsellino was also killed in a car bomb attack, along with five members of his escort. Only his driver survived.

Falcone and Borsellino posed a real threat to Cosa Nostra, an organised crime group which boasted access to the highest levels of Italian power.

The two judges were later credited with revolutionising the understanding of the mafia, working closely with the first informants and compiling evidence for a groundbreaking ‘maxi-trial’ in which hundreds of mobsters were convicted in 1987.

The killings, just 57 days apart, resulted in a huge outpouring of public grief in Italy and sparked a major crackdown against the Sicilian mafia, ultimately leading to the 1993 arrest of boss Salvatore Riina, who had orchestrated the Capaci bombing.

Riina died in jail in 2017.

“The civic and cultural revolution that went along with the state’s crackdown dealt a hard blow to Cosa Nostra, which still bears its consequences to this day,” the president of parliament’s anti-mafia commission Chiara Colosimo said on Wednesday.

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