“Defending Italy Is Not a Crime”: Salvini Reacts to Prosecutors’ Request for Six-Year Sentence
15th September 2024
Matteo Salvini, Italy’s right-wing deputy prime minister, is hitting back after Italian prosecutors requested on Saturday a six-year prison sentence against him for blocking migrants from disembarking at one of the country’s ports in 2019.
“Six years in prison for blocking landings and defending Italy and Italians? Madness. Defending Italy is not a crime and I will not give up, not now, not ever,” Salvini wrote on X.
Salvini, a partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition, is on trial for alleged “deprivation of liberty and abuse of office” for preventing the Lampedusa landing of the Open Arms ship run by a Spanish NGO and “keeping 147 migrants at sea for weeks.” In a video message on X, the deputy prime minister described in detail the events leading up to his decision to prevent the landing in Italy.