Italy’s Salvini faces verdict for blocking migrants at sea. Case weighs limits of stemming migration

Associated Press

MILAN (AP) — Italy’s deputy premier, Matteo Salvini, is sounding defiant as he awaits a verdict in Sicily for preventing some 100 migrants from disembarking a rescue boat in 2019 when he was interior minister. Salvini, who leads the Euroskeptic, anti-migrant League, told a rally last week that “defending the borders, the dignity, the laws, the honor of a country cannot ever be a crime.” He has vowed to enter the court in Palermo on Friday with his “head held high” to hear a court’s verdict on whether he is guilty of detaining the migrants when he prevented them from disembarking from the Open Arms rescue ship for five days in August 2019. He faces up to six years in jail, and could be banned from political office.