The surreal Open Arms trial against Salvini
Facts and comments on the Palermo Open Arms trial against Matteo Salvini. Paola Sacchi's note
Maurizio Lupi, leader of Noi Moderati, gives a good idea with a caustic tweet: “Salvini on trial and Conte witness for the prosecution. An absurd and grotesque mix, halfway between 'Kafka's trial' and Ionesco's theater of the absurd. Where was the prime minister who 'directs the general government policy and is responsible for it' when his minister, according to the prosecutor's office, committed a crime?”.
The Palermo "Open Arms" trial of Matteo Salvini plunges into the political debate by putting the political use of justice against political opponents back at the center. Perhaps the only thing left to unite the torn centre-left.
Against Salvini, sent to trial, the field was not wide, but very wide, thumbs down together with Pd and Cinque Stelle also from Matteo Renzi's Iv.
Some Renzian exponents make fun of and define Conte and Luigi Di Maio's distance from the work of the other shareholder of their government as interior minister as "hypocritical", without however recalling that the process of a political decision, of the then Conte / 1 government, they wanted it too. A precedent from which Pier Ferdinando Casini clearly distinguished himself, who as a coherent guarantor and defender of the autonomy of politics voted no to the trial of Salvini.
The fact is that while Conte and Di Maio – then respectively prime minister and minister of economic development as well as deputy prime minister, the latter position also held by Salvini himself, in the so-called yellow-green executive – distance themselves and accuse their former ally, with whom it seems no longer speak, even of having tried to gain consensus, the deposition of Luciana Lamorgese, Minister of the Interior in Conte/2, is judged "significant" by Giulia Bongiorno, Salvini's defense lawyer. Indeed, says Bongiorno, "particularly significant". Because "from its reconstruction – underlines the lawyer – I think it has become evident that it is truly erroneous and misleading to think that the delay in landing is a malicious act".
Larmorghese recalled that she had delayed the disembarkation since she was busy at a European summit, where she was grappling with the solution to the problem of the redistribution of migrants.
At the end of the day, after the hearing, Salvini himself intervened, posting a photo of himself alone in the Ucciardone bunker room on Facebook: "The hearing celebrated today (yesterday, ed) in Palermo for the Open Arms case confirmed an objective fact: risk of up to 15 years in prison for failure to disembark from the Spanish NGO ship between 14 and 20 August 2019, despite Luciana Lamorgese having confirmed that she had detained immigrants on board a ship more than once occasion, for example on the Ocean Viking from 18 to 29 October 2019 waiting to find an agreement with the other European partners. Or on the Alan Kurdi, from 26 October to 3 November 2019”.
"And yet – recalls the vice president of the Council – only I had brought down the number of arrivals, defending the borders and avoiding many tragedies of the sea, but only I am on trial and thanks to the votes of left-wing MPs". Salvini says he is "bewildered also because surprisingly the information collected from a Navy submarine emerged only during the ongoing proceedings: it recorded the activity of Open Arms in August 2019, certifying some anomalies that suggested illegal trafficking in human beings. These are documents which, if they had been immediately available, probably would not have even started this affair". The Northern League leader and Infrastructure Minister concludes: “I am determined to go all the way to ascertain the truth and a complaint is already ready: why has no prosecutor's office investigated this information? Yet it was proven that it had been passed on to eight (eight!) prosecutors. I carry on, proudly, with my head held high and with a clear conscience."
A "serious, paradoxical, the truth will come out" affair, are the reactions of the Northern League MPs Claudio Borghi and Alberto Bagnai, Stefano Candiani. Which attacks: "Page designed especially for Salvini". The blue Maurizio Gasparri, vice president of the Senate, who was president of the council for immunity, is also tough and remarks on the "gravity of the silence of the prosecutors who had received the files received" on the submarine. Salvini, announces Bongiorno, will speak at the next hearing, scheduled for March.
> But the theme of justice with the surreal trial underway of one of the two deputy prime ministers of the Meloni government cannot fail to be part of the electoral clash between the center-right and the center-left for the vote in Lombardy and Lazio.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/il-surreale-processo-open-arms-contro-salvini/ on Sat, 14 Jan 2023 07:44:07 +0000.