A verdict is expected on Friday in the trial of Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who is accused of kidnap and dereliction of duty over his refusal to let a migrant rescue boat dock in Italy in 2019.
Prosecutors in Sicily have asked judges to sentence him to six years in jail.
Salvini, who’s leader of the right-wing Lega party and a government ally of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, has already said he will lodge an appeal if found guilty.
He has pushed back against the accusations, repeatedly alleging the judges were being “political” and maintaining his only guilt was in wanting to “protect Italy”.
One of the prosecutors, Geri Ferrara, told the court in September that human rights had to prevail over the “protection of state sovereignty”.
“A person stranded at sea must be saved and it is irrelevant whether they are classified as a migrant, a crewmember or a passenger”, she said.
An NGO ship called Open Arms was carrying 147 migrants picked up off the Libyan coast when it was prevented from docking on the Italian island of Lampedusa on the orders of Salvini, who was interior minister at the time.
The Open Arms remained at sea for almost three weeks, and the health situation of the migrants on board seriously deteriorated.
Eventually, the prosecutor in the Sicilian city of Agrigento, Luigi Patronaggio, ordered the vessel to be preventatively seized after inspecting it and noting the “difficult situation on board”.
Salvini maintained that the then-government of Giuseppe Conte had backed him fully in his mission to “close the ports” of Italy to NGO rescue ships.
PM Giorgia Meloni has stood by her deputy prime minister, saying he had her and her government’s “solidarity”.
“Turning the duty to protect Italy’s borders from illegal immigration into a crime is a very serious precedent,” she posted on X earlier this year.
She has never indicated that she would expect his resignation in case of a guilty verdict, and for his part Salvini has said he would not step down.
In recent months he has frequently referenced the trial and the forthcoming verdict in social media posts and during public speeches and interviews.
“I want to believe that Italy is a normal country, and in a normal country someone who defends borders isn’t found guilty,” he told Italian media earlier this week. If that was the case, he said, “it would be terrible news for the country and a reason to celebrate for people smugglers and enemies of Italy”.
He has also alleged that the Italian judiciary was “politicised” and that some magistrates were “clearly following left-wing politics”.
Elly Schlein, leader of the centre-left opposition Democratic Party, accused Salvini of “spreading propaganda and fuelling a serious institutional clash”.
The three female prosecutors in the case have been under police protection since September after being harassed online and receiving threats.
Members of Salvini’s Lega party have rallied around him and are preparing demonstrations in his support.
On Wednesday, Lega MEPs turned up at a European Parliament session in Strasbourg wearing t-shirts that read “Guilty of defending Italy” – a slogan Salvini has used in the past.
“A conviction would be an incredibly serious matter,” said Lega deputy secretary Andrea Crippa: “It would be like convicting the entire Italian people, the Italian parliament and the elected government.”
Lombardy’s Lega party president, Attilio Fontana, said a guilty verdict would be “so aberrant, even from a judicial point of view, that I don’t even want to think about it”.
Others outside Italy have waded into the debate too.
“That mad prosecutor should be the one who goes to prison for six years,” Elon Musk tweeted, while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a close ally of Salvini, called the trial “shameful”.
If convicted, Salvini has said he will appeal against the verdict “all the way to the Supreme Court of Cassation” – Italy’s highest court.
That process could take months and Salvini’s position in the government and parliament would be unaffected.