Italy's top court has declared the acquittal of Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini final in the case involving the Spanish NGO ship Open Arms. The decision was made on December 17.

During the case, Salvini had been accused of kidnapping and refusal to perform official duties. The case concerned an incident dating from August 2019, in which 147 migrants were not allowed to disembark for several days after arriving near the Italian coast off the island of Lampedusa, while Salvini was serving as interior minister.

After four hours of deliberation, Italy's Court of Cassation rejected the appeal filed by the Palermo prosecutor's office against Salvini's acquittal issued the previous December.

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Reactions to ruling

The deputy prime minister himself reacted to the ruling on his X account, writing: "Acquitted (after five years of trial). Defending our borders is not a crime."

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — who broke into applause in the Senate chamber upon learning the news — called it good news and said the accusations against Salvini had been "baseless."

"It confirms a simple and fundamental principle: a minister who defends Italy's borders is not committing a crime, but doing his duty," the prime minister wrote on Facebook.

"The ruling highlighted that the prosecutor's appeal was unrealistic and, above all, stressed the correctness of Salvini's actions," commented Salvini's lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno.

"All of this confirms that this trial should never have begun. [...] He acted in Italy's interests. [...] Justice has been served," said Italy's current Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban also expressed satisfaction. "My patriotic friend Matteo Salvini has been the target of a political witch hunt for five years, put on trial for blocking an illegal landing in Italy. Five long years of legal proceedings have proven one thing: defending your country's borders is NOT a crime!" Orban wrote on X.

By contrast, Open Arms founder Oscar Camps condemned what he described as a "political decision."

Camps added that in his opinion, reported various Italian media outlets: "Justice has not been done today either; instead, impunity has been created."

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Reasons underlying judges' decision

The judges essentially upheld a request by the prosecutor general's office, which in a document of around 50 pages filed in recent weeks reiterated the lack of grounds for the charges against the League party leader.

The office stated in the document that the appeal had "focused exclusively on the private conduct affecting personal freedom, without addressing the reconstructive aspects of the element of 'guilt'," noting that this led to a "lack of proof of the actual elements of the crime with which the defendant was charged."

So, essentially, the judges at the Court of Cassation ended up upholding the first ruling in the case.

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First degree ruling, 'safe port was Spain's duty'

In the reasoning behind the first-instance ruling, the Palermo court stated that Italy — and therefore its interior minister — was not obliged to assign a safe port to the Open Arms ship, as this responsibility lay with Spain.

The court stated that Spain had had the obligation to safeguard the refugees, who were disembarked only after a prolonged contest of wills and intervention by the Agrigento prosecutors' office: because its coordination and maritime rescue center had "engaged in minimal coordination from the very 'first contact'", and because "Malta, in refusing its responsibility for the first two rescue operations, had clearly indicated Spain (the flag of which the ship was carrying) as the only authority to have the duty of assisting the vessel."

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