Announced no earlier than 6pm, the sentence of the Open Arms Trial arrived at 7.39pm: in the name of the Italian people, based on article 530 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. the Court of Palermo acquits Matteo Salvini of the crimes ascribed because the fact does not exist. The panel made up of judges, Roberto Murgia president and Elisabetta Villa and Andrea Innocenti, had retired to the council chamber at approximately 11.35.
Thus ends the first degree of the trial known in the news as Open Arms after three years of trial, 24 hearings, 45 witnesses heard. In the bunker room of the Pagliarielli prison in Palermo, the president of the College Roberto Murgia did not authorize filming or photography.
The clamor around the story, destined to grow in the next few hours, had already been equally hot for months and months even without images to investigate faces and reactions, for intrinsic reasons: the fact that a minister of the Republic, in the exercise of his duties, was tried on charges of kidnapping. And also for extrinsic reasonsbecause it was Salvini himself during the trial who transformed it into a countdown on social media, loading it with a heavy political meaning, which in recent months has contributed to overheating the climate between power and the executive and judiciary.
«I promised to stop mass immigration and we did it», stated the current transport minister before entering the chamber this morning in front of the forest of microphones, «we reduced deaths at sea, we protected Italians , we have reduced crimes, saved lives, I don’t expect a medal, but whatever the sentence I am proud to have kept the promises made to Italians and therefore I enter this courtroom confident and proud”.
Although it should be remembered that it was the Senate itself that removed from the table the suspicion of political fumus persecutionis from the proceedings, when on 30 July 2020 it granted authorization to proceed for Matteo Salvini at the time of the events, Minister of the Interiorforeseen for proceedings against ministers even if they have ceased to hold office on the basis of article 96 of the Constitution who can, yes, be subjected to ordinary jurisdiction for crimes committed in the exercise of their functions subject to authorization from the Chamber or the Senate.
Kidnapping and refusal of official documents were the crimes contested by the public prosecution. In essence, he was accused of having denied disembarkation, as head of the Ministry of the Interior, for nineteen days to 147 migrants, including 27 minors, rescued in three separate operations by the Spanish NGO Open Arms. The Prosecutor’s Office in its indictment Marzia Sabella, deputy prosecutor, claimed that “at least since 14 August 2019, Salvini” was aware of having a “clear obligation” to assign the vessel a safe port. And that he had failed to carry out this act with “intentional and conscious disregard for the rules”, voluntarily violating “the personal freedom of 147 people”.
At the center of the dispute with the defense is above all the fact that Salvini had or had not acted in concert with the Prime Minister of the time Giuseppe Conte: «He acted alone against everyone, causing institutional chaos, and without the presence of any real risk for the security of the country, but only”, the prosecution claimed, “without “legally, factually and humanly appreciable justification”.
Of an opposite opinion is the defense represented by the President of the Justice Commission in the Senate Giulia Bongiorno, according to which the ship would have “loitered” around the Mediterranean and could have disembarked anyone who had complained not of an illness but of a simple inconvenience or malaise such as insomnia. «The penal code does not punish those who deny the freedom to land in Italy, but those who deny freedom of movement. In this case Open Arms voluntarily prevented the collected migrants from going elsewhere. They had the duty to go to Spain, where they had been offered to disembark, but they didn’t want to.” He supported Giulia Bongiorno, deducing that there was no responsibility on the part of the former Interior Minister and no crime against him and asking for the acquittal which then arrived.
In the last back-and-forth this morning, in which the 27 civil parties and Oscar Camps, founder of Open Arms, were present, the parties reiterated their positions.
To guarantee support for the leader of the League, there was the Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara “as a friend”, who had already participated in the small demonstration in the square in Palermo on the day of the defense arguments, with him other exponents of the party, not only Sicilians : Undersecretary Alessandro Morelli and Armando Siri. The current Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, in the evening, responding to journalists on the sidelines of the meeting of the Provincial Committee for Order and Security in Caivano, before knowing the sentence, had assured: «it will not influence the government in any way ».
