Italy's deputy PM Salvini cleared in kidnap trial of migrants blocked at sea

The Open Arms rescue boat was kept from docking for three weeks with 147 migrants on board

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has been acquitted in a long-running case over his refusal to let a migrant rescue boat dock in Italy in 2019.

Judges in the Sicilian city of Palermo cleared him of two counts of kidnap and dereliction of duty, after prosecutors had sought a jail term of six years.

Salvini, who's leader of the right-wing Lega party and a government ally of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, has always argued he was guilty only of wanting to "protect Italy".

"I have kept my promises, combating mass immigration and reducing departures, landings and deaths at sea," he told reporters outside court on Friday.

On hearing the verdict, Salvini clenched his fists in a sign of victory and hugged his girlfriend, film producer Francesca Verdini, Ansa news agency reported.

The trial began in September 2021, focusing on a case when Salvini, as interior minister, had sought to stop irregular migrants crossing the Mediterranean by blocking Italy's ports.

He had ordered an NGO ship called Open Arms to be prevented from docking on the island of Lampedusa after it had picked up 147 migrants off the Libyan coast.

The Open Arms remained at sea for almost three weeks, and the health situation of the migrants on board seriously deteriorated.

Eventually, the prosecutor in the Sicilian city of Agrigento, Luigi Patronaggio, ordered the vessel to be preventatively seized after inspecting it and noting the "difficult situation on board".

The captain of Open Arms and some of those rescued from sea were civil parties in the case, which began in September 2021.

The three female prosecutors in the case have been under police protection after being harassed online and receiving threats.

One of them, Geri Ferrara, told the court in September that human rights had to prevail over the "protection of state sovereignty".

"A person stranded at sea must be saved and it is irrelevant whether they are classified as a migrant, a crewmember or a passenger", she said.

Salvini maintained that the then-government of Giuseppe Conte had backed him fully in his mission to "close the ports" of Italy to NGO rescue ships.

In recent months, the deputy prime minister had frequently referenced the trial and the forthcoming verdict in social media posts and during public speeches and interviews.

PM Giorgia Meloni has stood by her deputy prime minister, saying he had her and her government's "solidarity".

"Turning the duty to protect Italy's borders from illegal immigration into a crime is a very serious precedent," she posted on X earlier this year.

Matteo Salvini's party has rallied around him ahead of the verdict

After the verdict, the governor of the Veneto region and Lega party colleague Luca Zaia said justice had been done.

"Salvini acted in the legitimate interest of our country and in full respect for his institutional responsibilities," he posted on Facebook.

Salvini had been criticised after he said the Italian judiciary was "politicised" and that some magistrates were "clearly following left-wing politics".

Elly Schlein, leader of the centre-left opposition Democratic Party, accused him of "spreading propaganda and fuelling a serious institutional clash".

Members of Salvini's Lega party rallied around him. On Wednesday, Lega MEPs turned up at a European Parliament session in Strasbourg wearing t-shirts that read "Guilty of defending Italy" - a slogan Salvini has used in the past.

Current Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said on Friday that whatever the sentence it would not affect the government.

However, Lega deputy secretary Andrea Crippa had warned that a guilty verdict would be "like convicting the entire Italian people, the Italian parliament and the elected government".

Others outside Italy have waded into the debate too.

"That mad prosecutor should be the one who goes to prison for six years," Elon Musk tweeted, while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a close ally of Salvini, called the trial "shameful".