The voting has been tight. The Italian Senate gave its approval Thursday to the lifting of the immunity of Matteo Salvini. The head of the League shall be held in the near future to the confinement of migrants. Acts committed when he was still minister of the Interior. The senators voted by a show of hands 149 votes to 141. "I am proud to have defended Italy and I would do it again ", launched to Matteo Salvini after the vote.
This vote occurs in the midst of the resurgence of crossings of migrants in the Mediterranean. They are hundreds of land every day on the coasts of the Italian islands of Lampedusa and Sicily, in small boats, or to be rescued at sea by ships the humanitarian and coast guards. Matteo Salvini is accused by the tribunal of Palermo, in Sicily, of the abduction of persons for refusing in August 2019, in his quality of minister of the Interior, to authorize the landing of more than 80 migrants aboard the ship humanitarian Open Arms, blocked off Sicily.
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Up to 15 years in prison
The immunity lifted, Matteo Salvini faces up to 15 years in prison in the case if the legal procedure goes to its end. "If someone thinks to scare me with a lawsuit aimed at the policy, it is mistaken," he started a little earlier in the House. A commission of the Senate was expressed in may against the waiver of immunity in this case but the Senate, in plenary session, had already lifted in February in another folder for which he will be judged on 3 October.
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In this procedure, he is accused of having blocked in July 2019, for several days, 116 migrants aboard the Gregoretti, a vessel of the coast guard. And in both cases, the League had sought to be clear in stating that the blocking of the vessels was a collective decision of the government, and therefore also the responsibility of the Prime minister, Giuseppe Conte.
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A green light from the Senate to lift the immunity will " definitely be consequences for Salvini ", whose popularity has fallen since the beginning of the pandemic, which has become the main concern of Italians to immigration, his favourite theme, advance the political scientist Franco Pavoncello. A survey by the institute Demopolis released this week lends to the League of 25.4 % of voting intentions, down 11 points in one year, then that party postfasciste Fratelli d'italia has the wind in its sails.
