Open Arms case, the Prosecutor’s Office holds Matteo Salvini’s acquittal: “Error in the application of the laws”

New judicial turning point for the Open Arms case. The Palermo Prosecutor decided to challenge directly in the Cassation, without going through the appeal, the sentence with which On 20 December the Court had acquitted Matteo Salvini from the accusation of kidnapping and refusal of office documents For the facts of August 2019. Then, the then interior minister forbidden The landing in Lampedusa of 147 migrants aboard the Open Arms ship.

The Palermo magistrates, led by the prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia, opted for an appeal “for Saltum”, which allows you to bring the question directly before the Supreme Court, asking that it is pronounced exclusively on the issues of law, without re -evaluating the facts.

As the Corriere della Seraat the center of Salvini’s acquittal is the thesis according to which the Italian state did not have the legal obligation to assign the Open Arms ship a safe port (POS), due to the alleged uncertainty of international conventions. A reading that the Prosecutor disputes hard. In the act of appeal, filed on 17 July, public ministries define the sentence “manifestly spoiled For the non -compliance of that series of integrating rules, such as those on personal freedom and conventions signed by Italy for rescue at sea, of which the Court should have taken into account the application of the criminal law “.

A central element of the accusatory strategy is a recent decision of the United Civil Sections of the Court of Cassation, which last February sentenced the Italian State to compensate one of the migrants withheld in 2018 aboard the Diciotti ship. “It is exactly the same story,” he explained to Daily The jurist Luca Masera, an expert in immigration law. “For the Court of Cassation, the international rules on the rescue at sea imposed the Minister to land the castaways in the shortest possible timeand therefore his refusal was an illegitimate act ».

In the appeal, the prosecutors explicitly recall that ruling: «The order of the United Sections has substantially stated that the denied landing, far from being justifiable in the light of the procedures provided for in the subject of Search and Rescue, not only is in contrast with the clear international legislation on the rescue at sea, but above all Viola article 13 of the Constitution, according to which no one can be deprived of personal freedom except in the cases provided for by the law “.

According to the magistrates, the migrants blocked on the eighteen “undoubtedly suffered arbitrary deprivation of personal freedom” And the decision of merit that he had denied them compensation, “he had not confronted these provisions of superior rank”. The same vice would concern the sentence on the Open Arms case: even in that case the judges would have ignored international and constitutional fundamental rules.

If the Cassation accepts the appeal, the trial will be postponed to the Court of Appeal to be reviewed in the light of the principles of law that the Supreme Court will indicate. A move, that of the prosecutor, which follows what was successfully done in the Ruby ter case.

Immediate reaction of Matteo Salvini, who on social networks has relaunched his historic slogan: “Defending Italy and its borders is not a crime”. Then, to journalists in Milan, he said: “I did more than thirty hearings, the court acquitted me because the fact does not exist, recognizing that defending the boundaries is not a crime. Evidently someone does not resign themselves. Let’s go on: don’t worry ».

Among the first to express him solidarity there was Matteo planted, today Minister of the Interior and at the time of the chief of the Cabinet of Salvini At the Interior Ministry: «I am very sorry for this news, it impressed me a lot, in the profound respect for the judicial passages. I’m humanly sorry, personally and also professionally, “he said. And he then added, claiming the choices made at that time: «I lived that season from Chief of Cabinet of Salvini. I feel even more participating and I claim the action that was made to counter illegal immigration, which is not so different from the mafias. I consider myself morally attributable too ».