The second preliminary hearing is underway in Catania for the request for indictment for kidnapping of the former Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini for the delays in disembarking from Gregoretti ship of 131 migrants in Augusta on 31 July 2019.
In the bunker hall of the Bicocca prison in front of the Gup Nunzio Sarpietro, who summoned them as witnesses, the former ministers of Transport, Danilo Toninelli, and of Defense, Elisabetta Trenta, were called to testify.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte will be heard in Rome by Gup Sarpietro after the premier made use of the second head of article 205 of the Code of Criminal Procedure providing that the Prime Minister can ask to "be examined in the place where they exercise their office , in order to guarantee the continuity and regularity of the function for which they are responsible ".
Present in the classroom Salvin who announced he will speak on the role of his former government in his decision.
During the same hearing, Gup Sarpietro will set the new date for the procedure and for the next hearings, as witnesses, of the Minister of the Interior, Luciana Lamorgese, of the then Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio and of the Ambassador Maurizio Massari.
Last October 3, the Gup Sarpietro issued an ordinance that arranges their witness hearings to "carry out an adequate verification adopted at the government level, in matters of immigration at the time of the facts and in relations with the EU, also with reference to the so-called 'Government Pact' ".
Salvini is accused of having, "abusing his powers" since then Minister of the Interior, "deprived of personal freedom the 131 migrants blocked aboard the Gregoretti from 00:35 on 27 July 2019 until the afternoon on 31 July".
"The video in which Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte talks about the government and the role of the executive in the decision on the landings of migrants in Italy as a shared idea is in the defensive brief already filed in the proceedings", said lawyer
Giulia Bongiorno,
defender of Matteo Salvini before entering the courtroom in Bicocca for the preliminary hearing for the request for indictment of the former Minister of the Interior for the Gregoretti case.
"I will speak in the courtroom by reporting some data. We saved lives and protected a country, what did not happen later because after me there were drowned deaths denied rights. I am only sorry to have to waste time in judges, lawyers, forces of the ' order in a bunker court which is usually used for mafia trials. I am an Italian citizen respectful of what justice asks me to answer for what I had promised Italians to do: stop human trafficking and the business of illegal immigration without hurting anyone. I'm curious to hear what Conte, Di Maio, Toninelli and the other ministers who shared this line with me will say in the courtroom ".
Matteo Salvini said this as he entered the Bicocca bunker classroom in Catania for the preliminary hearing on the Gregoretti case.
"The government's line was to make other European states interested in the placement of migrants. But each landing was a separate case".
This was stated by the former Minister of Transport,
Danilo Toninelli
, responding to a question from the lawyer Giulia Bongiorno.
