The Spanish Aita Mari migrant
rescue ship docked in Messina Thursday with 158 migrants it had
rescued in two operations in the last few days.
On Sunday it recovered 93 people, including 16 women, three
of them pregnant, and 24 minors including 12 children.
It subsequently rescued another drifting migrant boat with
another 65 people on board.
Migrant reception officials, officials from the city
council, police HQ and the prefecture were waiting for the
migrants as well as police officers.
After checks and controls, the migrants are expected to be
taken to the first-reception barracks Gasparro in Bisconte.
The Senate on Wednesday voted to allow prosecutors to proceed
against League leader Matteo Salvini for allegedly illegally
detaining a group of migrants when he was interior minister in a
previous government.
The Upper House voted by 76 to 152 to reject a petition by
Forza Italia and Brothers of Italy, Salvini's allies, to deny
authorisation, with the League boycotting the vote.
The case regards Salvini's decision to not allow more than
100 rescued migrants to disembark from the Gregoretti Coast
Guard ship for several days during a long standoff in July.
The Senate's immunity panel had already given the OK for the
Catania court of ministers' request to parliament to proceed
against Salvini for allegedly abusing his power and the floor of
the Upper House has now ratified the decision to lift Salvini's
parliamentary immunity.
Salvini, who operated a closed ports policy while interior
minister in the last government, sending the League's poll
ratings sky-high, faced prosecution before but his parliamentary
immunity was never lifted so he could go to trial in previous
similar cases.
"I'm absolutely relaxed about this and proud of what I did,"
Salvini told ANSA after the vote, which members of his party did
not take part in.
"I'll do it again as soon as I get back in government.
"I swore on the Constitution, which says that defending the
nation is every citizen's duty.
"I defended Italy".
Salvini argued that, as in other such cases, his decision was
made with the rest of the government he was then part of.
Premier Giuseppe Conte, on the other hand, said he was not
involved in the specific decision of whether to allow the
migrants to disembark.
Salvini pulled the plug on Conte's first government in August
prompting the creation of a new ruling majority.
Asked if he was worried about becoming ineligible for office
in the event of a conviction, Salvini said "absolutely not".
He said he had "no back-up plan" for that eventuality.
He said he had "absolute and total faith" in the Italian
judiciary.
"It seems to me that the Catania prosecutors themselves have
said that the crime does not exist. I don't see any big
problems. I'm not in the least bit worried," he told ANSA.
Salvini, who risks 15 years for abuse of office and a 6-8
year office ban, faces another migrant 'kidnapping' case
regarding the NGO Open Arms, which will come before a Senate
immunity panel on February 27.
Viti Crimi, interim leader of the anti-establishment 5-Star
Movement (M5S), Salvini's former government partner, said "the
League leader has been living in a confused state for months.
"First he hailed his decision on the Gregoretti case, then he
cried plot, saying it was an action promoted by the whole
government.
"First he says he wants to be tried, then he doesn't want to
any more, and then he wants to again.
"He has changed his mind so many times that it's impossible
to understand what he really thinks about it", Crimi said in a
post entitled "Only fleeing and lies from Salvini".
The M5S, which was in government with Salvini for 14 months
until he toppled it last July, is now in government with the
centre-left Democratic Party (PD), ex-PD leader and former
premier Matteo Renzi's centrist Italia Viva (IV) party, and the
leftwing Free and Equal (LeU) party.
Salvini recently endured a setback when the League failed to
win another leftwing stronghold, Emilia Romagna, after taking
Umbria from the centre-left last year.
Salvini, a 46-year-old Milan native and former Communist in
his teens, took over the League in 2013 when it was languishing
at 4% in the polls and has boosted it to around 30%, the
top-rating party in Italy, with a switch from a regionalist to a
nationalist stance and his highly popular migrant and
law-and-order policies.
A new grassroots anti-populist movement, the Sardines, has
packed out squares across Italy, starting in Bologna, in
opposition to Salvini.
Sardines leader Mattia Santori said the "veil" had been
lifted from Salvini and there should now be "transparency on
what happened under the Conte I government".
Milan prosecutors are probing Salvini's former spokesman for
allegedly receiving Russian funding in oil kickbacks.
The number of migrants who crossed the central Mediterranean
in January 2020 more than doubled that in December 2019, at
around 1,500, six times what it was in January 2019, Frontex
said Wednesday.
The EU border agency said that migratory pressure in the
central Med went against the trend in the other main routes,
where it fell 58% in the eastern Med and by a quarter in the
western Med.
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