By Wladimir Pantaleone and Angelo Amante
PALERMO, Italy (Reuters) – A court in Palermo is expected to deliver a verdict on Friday in a kidnapping trial involving Italy’s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, who risks a six-year prison term for holding a boat full of migrants offshore for almost three weeks in 2019.
Salvini, who was interior minister at the time, tried to prevent the Spanish charity Open Arms from bringing 147 asylum seekers to Italy as part of his policy to close the ports to migrant boats and curb irregular arrivals.
The verdict comes against a backdrop of tensions between the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the judiciary on the migration issue, after a court in Rome questioned the legality of her flagship plan to send asylum seekers to Albania.
Salvini has always denied wrongdoing, arguing that he only aimed to defend national borders and accused the charity groups of helping to attract migrants to Italy.
If convicted, Salvini will have a right to two appeals before a final ruling that could bar him from holding office. That process could take years, but he has vowed not to stand down if found guilty in first instance, and he has the support of Meloni.
The charity ship picked up the mainly African migrants off the coast of Libya over a two week period and asked to dock in an Italian port.
It turned down a request to sail to its home country Spain, saying those on board were too exhausted to face the three-day voyage and needed immediate care, triggering a confrontation with Salvini.
Magistrates eventually seized the boat and ordered the evacuation of the migrants, but Salvini was subsequently charged with kidnapping and dereliction of duty.
Defence lawyer Giulia Bongiorno, who is a senator with Salvini’s League party, told the judges there was no automatic right for the boats to dock in Italy and the migrants could have been taken elsewhere if the charity had been concerned for their welfare.
In Brussels on Thursday, Salvini met allies from the far-right Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament.
A number of them, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Santiago Abascal, the leader of the Spanish Vox party, posed for a picture with Salvini holding a T-shirt showing his face and the message “guilty of having defended Italy.”
U.S. billionaire Elon Musk, who last month criticised Italian judges for ruling against the government plan to send migrants to Albania, wrote on his X account that it was “crazy” that Salvini was being tried for “defending Italy.”
The League chief thanked Musk for the support and said he was proud of what he had accomplished in his bid to defend Italy’s borders.
(Writing by Angelo Amante; Editing by Keith Weir)
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