Six years requested for Salvini: the Open Arms trial timeline

 Six years of imprisonment: this is the sentence requested by the prosecution, two years after the beginning of the trial against Matteo Salvini, accused of illegitimately denying the Open Arms vessel permission to disembark 147 refugees rescued at sea in the port of Lampedusa in August 2019. But let’s rewind and go through the key points of this case.

The refugees were stranded for 20 days on the ship. In August 2019, the Open Arms vessel was stuck for 20 days off Lampedusa because Matteo Salvini (then Minister of the Interior) did not allow the 147 refugees on board the NGO's vessel to disembark. It was only after an inspection on board by the then prosecutor of Agrigento, Luigi Patronaggio, that the magistrates ordered the urgent disembarkation of the exhausted refugees suffering from the heat and the long journey at sea.

In November 2019, the Tribunal of Ministers received from the prosecutors the request to initiate preliminary investigations against the League's leader. In their ruling, in which the tribunal largely upheld the prosecutor's reconstruction, the judges emphasized the principle of the obligation to rescue at sea and described Salvini’s act of denying the disembarkation as an "administrative" decision, not a political one. In summary, the decision to deny the disembarkation in Lampedusa, according to the prosecutors, was an individual decision by the then Minister of the Interior and was not "shared" with other members of the government, as Salvini has always claimed.

Meanwhile, on May 26, 2020, the Senate’s Immunities Committee rejected the request for authorization to proceed against Salvini, but on July 30, the Senate granted the go-ahead with 149 votes in favor and 141 against, sending Salvini to trial. Following the Senate's green light, the Palermo Prosecutor's Office pressed for Salvini’s indictment. Salvini’s lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, requested a dismissal of the case, arguing that the alleged crime did not occur, or alternatively, citing the case's political immunity.

The start of the trial
The preliminary hearing judge, Lorenzo Iannelli, accepted the prosecutor’s arguments and set the first hearing of the trial for September 15, 2021. The trial, which lasted two years, saw testimonies from several high-profile politicians, including former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, former Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, and current Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi. The tribunal had also accepted the testimony of actor Richard Gere, who had boarded the ship to personally witness the migrants' conditions, though Gere had to withdraw from testifying due to filming commitments.