The trial for the case of the NGO Open Arms ship, which begins on September 15 in Palermo, opens a discussion on three topics: the accusation of kidnapping against the leader of the first Italian party according to the polls; the potential political consequences in the event of a definitive conviction of Matteo Salvini in the Supreme Court; the endless discussions on how to govern irregular immigration. THE ACCUSATION OF SEQUESTRATION It
will be the Court of Palermo to evaluate the documents. The Open Arms case from the beginning had appeared different from the others because the story ended when the government crisis was opened in August 2019 and the clash between Salvini and the then president Giuseppe Conteit was at the highest level. After the first prohibition of entry into Italian waters signed on 1 August by Salvini and the Ministers of Defense and Infrastructure, Elisabetta Trenta and Danilo Toninelli , the then owner of the Interior Ministry, issue a second of which was notified at 11.39pm of 14 August, when the ship had already entered following the decree of the president of the Prima Ter section of the Lazio Tar, Leonardo Pasanisi , which established the entry of the Open Arms into Italian territorial waters to “provide immediate assistance to the people rescued most needy, as it seems to have already happened for the most critical cases “. Salvini commented in a rally: “Who is that judge with
With the Italian people or with someone else
“. The second provision was not valid because it had not been signed by the other two ministers as required by the security decree bis. In essence, the absence of a collegiate government action emerges and therefore the crime of seizure which, according to the prosecution, would have materialized from 14 to 20 August when the ship was seized by the Agrigento prosecutor, Luigi Patronaggio. THE DEFENSE
The lawyer Giulia Bongiorno from the beginning has based her strategy on the equivalence of the facts with those of the investigation on the Gregoretti ship of the Coast Guard. On 12 August last, the reasons for the dismissal decided by the Gup of Catania Nunzio Sarpietro were disclosedfor which, in the Gregoretti case, “the formula ‘the fact does not exist’ was adopted because the accused did not act ‘contra ius’ but in compliance with the primary and secondary regulatory provisions dictated in the present case. The same cannot be charged with any conduct aimed at kidnapping migrants for a legally appreciable period of time “. Salvini comments that “unfortunately in September, for a similar case (concerning the Spanish NGO Open Arms), I will be on trial in Palermo accused of kidnapping, the penalty is up to 15 years in prison”. POLEMICS, ELECTIONS AND REFERENDUMS
However you think about the management of immigration, the trial for kidnapping a political leader and a disruptive event. Perhaps it is no coincidence that among the referendums on justice promoted by the Lega and the Radical Party there is the one for the abolition of the so-called Severino law (Professor Paola Severinowas Minister of Justice), that is the legislative decree 235 of 2012 which defines the cases of non-compliance and the prohibition of holding elective and government offices even for those sentenced to final sentences of more than two years of imprisonment for the crimes for which the maximum penalty is not less than four years. Kidnapping is one of them. If the referendum process goes smoothly, we could vote next year and could be one of the many reasons for bringing the legislature to the end of 2023 because in the event of early dissolution of Parliament, the referendums would be postponed by one year. It is not said that the Lega would do well.
According to the promoters of the referendum, in the case of the Severino law, the judge should decide whether in addition to the criminal conviction, a ban from public offices should also be imposed. Hits the decision of Giorgia Meloninot to sign to abolish Severino, because it would be “a step backwards in the fight against corruption”, in addition to the referendum on precautionary measures for excess preventive detention “because it would prevent the arrest of drug dealers and common criminals”. The start of the Palermo trial will throw more fuel on the fire of political controversies in view of the October administrative offices and the subsequent hearings, up to the first instance sentence, will go hand in hand with the election of the next President of the Republic and with the campaign election for the local elections scheduled for 2022. GOVERNING IMMIGRATION
Salvini also had unexpected defenders, such as Pier Ferdinando Casini in public or Luca Palamaraprivately not knowing that he is being intercepted. The controversy between the Northern League leader and the minister Luciana Lamorgesethey are daily because the numbers are disturbing: 41,204 arrivals this year compared to 20,968 last year and 5,856 in 2019. Today the situation is different: even if, even by blocking the ship of an NGO, immigrants still landed in Italy, according to the budget of the Interior Ministry of 15 August over the previous 12 months, 8.6 per cent, equal to 4,239 people, was rescued by NGOs (half of those in the Sar area), while 40,727 people arrived with autonomous landings equivalent to 82 , 6 per cent: Libya is in the lead with 45.3 per cent of departures, followed by Tunisia with 35.9 per cent. In a recent interview with Corriere della Sera, Minister Lamorgese said that “the pandemic crisis has exacerbated a socio-economic depression in the traditional areas of origin and transit of flows, favoring even more the migratory drive. Another factor that had a negative impact was that of the serious institutional, social and economic crises that hit Libya and Tunisia ”. “Nobody has a magic wand,” I commentMario Draghi in the press conference on 2 September. TWO WEIGHTS AND TWO SIZES
Always hoping, with the optimism of will, in the salvific intervention of the European Union to deal with the disastrous African situation, it is true that even the Lamorgese in the last two governments has kept ships with immigrants on board for several days as Salvini had done. . To Corriere della Sera, the minister explained that “Covid-19 has made all the first reception procedures more complex, especially those concerning the setting up of sanitary isolation structures, so much so that we had to resort to ferries to carry out the forty”. Yet the problem had arisen even before the pandemic and no prosecutor had opened a file whose process would have been quick because the current minister is not a parliamentarian. It would have ended as in the Gregoretti case for Salvini because the collegial action of the government would have been demonstrated, but the inactivity of the prosecutors was evident. Salvini’s defense cited 31 texts including Lamorgese herself and numerous former ministers. The process will therefore also become a forum for debate on an issue that still remains on the sidelines in Brussels.
