Italy’s Supreme Court definitively acquitted Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini over his blocking of an open borders NGO migrant boat that attempted to dump illegals into the country in 2019.
After a five year legal battle, the case against Transport Minister Matteo Salvini is finally over, after an appeal from Palermo prosecutors fell flat at the Court of Cassation in Rome on Wednesday, RAI reported.
The populist League leader had been accused of kidnapping and of breaching international law over his decision as Interior Minister in 2019 to prevent the Spanish NGO Open Arms migrant boat from docking at the island of Lampedusa and disembarking 147 illegal migrants on Italian soil. For this supposed offence, prosecutors sought a six year prison sentence against Salvini.
The Deputy PM had been acquitted by the Court of Palermo last December. However, the Sicilian prosecutors promptly launched an appeal to the Supreme Court.
According to Il Giornale, Salvini’s defence team successfully argued that because the NGO ship sailed under a Spanish flag and that the rescue of the illegal migrants occurred in Maltese waters, it was not the responsibility of the Italian government to take in the illegals, and therefore he had not breached international regulations on asylum seeking by blocking the ship from Italian ports.
Responding to the decision by the Supreme Court to reject the appeal, Salvini wrote on X that after five years of trials, it was finally determined that “defending borders is not a crime.”
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The post Italy’s Salvini Acquitted over Blocking Illegal Migrant NGO Ship appeared first on American Renaissance.
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