Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini, has appeared in court before the verdict in his case of kidnapping and contempt of duty for his refusal to release a boat to rescue migrants from Italy in 2019.
Prosecutors in Sicily asked the judges to sentence him to six years in prison.
Salvini, who is the leader of the right-wing Lega party and a colleague in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government, has said he will appeal if found guilty.
He hit back at the accusations, repeatedly saying that the judges were “political” and that keeping his case was a matter of “protecting Italy”.
Arriving in court on Friday, he said it was a good day “because I am proud to have defended my country”.
One of the prosecutors, Geri Ferrara, told the court in September that human rights should prevail over “the protection of state sovereignty”.
“A person stranded at sea must survive and it doesn’t matter if he is considered a person from another country, a worker or a passenger,” he said.
An NGO ship called Open Arms was carrying 147 migrants that was picked up off the coast of Libya when it was prevented from docking on the Italian island of Lampedusa on the orders of Salvini, who was the interior minister at the time.
The Open Arms remained at sea for about three weeks, and the health condition of the migrants on the boat worsened.
Finally, the prosecutor in the Sicilian city of Agrigento, Luigi Patronaggio, ordered the ship to be seized after inspecting it and noting the “difficult situation on board”.
Salvini insists that the government of the time Giuseppe Conte fully supported him in his campaign to “close the ports” of Italy to NGO rescue ships.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has stood by the deputy prime minister, saying he has the “unity” of his government.
“Turning the task of protecting Italy’s borders against illegal immigration into a crime is a terrible example,” he wrote in X earlier this year.
He has never indicated that he can expect his resignation if he is convicted, while Salvini said that he will not step down.
In recent months he has often referred to the case and the upcoming decision in social media posts and public speeches and interviews.
“I want to believe that Italy is a normal country, and in a normal country someone who guards the borders is not found guilty,” he told Italian media earlier this week. If so, he said, “it would be bad news for the country and a reason to celebrate the smugglers and the enemies of Italy”.
He also accused the Italian judiciary of being “political” and that some magistrates were “clearly following left-wing politics”.
Elly Schlein, the leader of the centre-left opposition Democratic Party, accused Salvini of “spreading propaganda and fueling institutional conflict”.
The three female prosecutors in the case have been under police protection since September after receiving online harassment and threats.
Members of Salvini’s Lega party met with him and prepared demonstrations in support of him.
On Wednesday, Lega MEPs attended a meeting of the European Parliament in Strasbourg wearing T-shirts that read “You are guilty of defending Italy” – a slogan previously used by Salvini.
“Conviction would be a very serious matter,” said Lega deputy secretary Andrea Crippa: “It would be like condemning all Italians, the Italian parliament and the elected government.”
The president of Lombardy’s Lega party, Attilio Fontana, said the guilty verdict would be “so contrary, even from a legal point of view, that I don’t even want to question it”.
Others outside Italy also joined the conversation.
“That crazy prosecutor should be the one who goes to jail for six years,” Elon Musk said on Twitter, while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a close friend of Salvini, called the case “disgraceful”.
If convicted, Salvini said he would appeal the decision “all the way to the Supreme Court of Cassation” – Italy’s highest court.
That process could take months and Salvini’s position in government and parliament will not be affected.
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