By Angelo Amante

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini speaks at Spanish far-right party VOX rally, in Madrid, Spain, February 8, 2025. REUTERS/Ana Beltran/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab

‘Defending Italy … is not a crime,’ Salvini says

ROME, July 18 (Reuters) – Prosecutors in the Italian city of Palermo have filed a direct appeal to the Supreme Court against the acquittal of Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini in a migrant kidnapping case, a court document showed on Friday.

Salvini – the leader of the League party – was charged after he ordered a boat carrying migrants to be kept out at sea when he was interior minister in 2019, an act that prosecutors said amounted to kidnapping the people on board.

Prosecutors had sought a six-year jail term for Salvini, who is now the transport minister in the government of Giorgia Meloni. But he was cleared last year.

“Defending Italy and its borders is not a crime,” Salvini said in a post on his Instagram profile on Friday in response to the prosecutors’ move.

In a 15-page document addressed to the Supreme Court, prosecutors Maurizio de Lucia, Giorgia Righi and Marzia Sabella said Salvini had violated international rules on maritime rescue and was guilty of kidnapping.

They said his conduct had been established by the court despite the acquittal verdict, and urged the judges to assess whether these actions constituted a crime.

The prosecutors’ move is unusual, as first-instance verdicts are typically challenged before an appeals court before reaching the Supreme Court’s judges.

The appeal request comes against the backdrop of tensions between the right-wing government and the judiciary.

Magistrates across Italy are resisting Meloni’s plan to break ties between prosecutors and judges, saying it undermines their independence. Courts have repeatedly blocked a government initiative to redirect migrants to Albania.

Meloni criticised the prosecutors’ decision to appeal, writing on X: “This doggedness is surreal, after a failed three-year trial of a minister who wanted to enforce the law, which ended with a full acquittal.”

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