Diciotti probe will be boomerang-Salvini

(ANSA) - Rome, August 27 - A probe against Interior Minister Matteo Salvini for allegedly kidnapping 177 Eritrean migrants aboard the Diciotti coast guard ship will be a "boomerang", Salvini said Monday.
    An Agrigento prosecutor has placed Salvini under investigation for kidnapping the migrants, who were allegedly unlawfully held for five days at sea and then another five days at Catania harbour.
    Salvini said he was not "cowed" and that he would not ask the Senate to refuse to lift his immunity from prosecution.
    "I only did my job as minister and I'm ready to do it again," Salvini said.
    Some 100 of the migrants will go to a Catholic centre at Rocca di Papa near Rome, Pope Francis said.
    Albania and Ireland will take about 20 each.
    Three Egyptians and a Bangladeshi have been arrested on charges of being the migrant traffickers.
    The other deputy premier, Industry and Labour Minister Luigi Di Maio, said in the next such case Italy "will negotiate directly with individual States".
    He said the government was defending Italy's interests.
    Most of the Eritrean migrants from the Diciotti will be moved from a Messina hotspot to a Catholic Church centre at Ariccia near Rome, the Italian Bishops' Conference (CEI) told a news agency on Monday.
    "They will be moved as soon as possible, in the coming hours, to the Arccia centre run by Auxiluim, pending their transfer to the many diocese who have given their availability: Turin, Brescia, Bologna, Agrigento, Cassano all'Jonio, Rossano Calabro, to cite only those I know about," CEI's head of social communications, Father Ivan Maffeis, told the SIR religious news agency.
    The CEI agreed to take in about 100 of the migrants while Albania and Ireland took 20 each to end a stand-off after Interior Minister Matteo Salvini kept them aboard saying they would not land until the EU agred to take them.
    Meanwhile Germany said funding the EU budget is an obligation laid down in the EU's founding treaties, commenting on Italy's threat to withhold some of its payment unless the EU agreed to take in the Diciotti migrants.
    EU budget funding "was ratified in the European treaties, and it is valid for all," said Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert.