Spanish migrant rescue NGO Open Arms
founder Oscar Camps said after a hearing in the trial of League
leader and former anti-migrant interior minister Matteo Salvini
for allegedly abducting migrants as part of his controversial
closed ports policy in 2019 that the charity was "serene and we
have never given up in our efforts to establish the truth".
Palermo State attorneys last month asked for six years'
imprisonment for current Deputy Premier and Transport Minister
Salvini on charges of kidnapping and refusal to perform official
acts for having prevented, five years ago, the disembarkation
from the Open Arms of 147 migrants in Lampedusa.
"Today, during the hearing of the trial of Matteo Salvini, the
defense presented its interpretation of the facts," Camps told
reporters outside the coutroom in the Sicilian capital.
"We are calm: the Prosecutor's Office has our statements and its
reconstruction fully corresponds to what we have always
maintained.
"In the meantime, we continue to see migration policies managed
in an emotional way, such as the attempt to deport migrants to
Albania, stopped by (the) justice (system," he went on,
referring to a ruling by a Rome court negating the detention of
the first 12 migrants to be taken for processing under an
innovative and controversial scheme with Albania..
"These practices do nothing but ignore fundamental human
rights," said Campa.
"Five years have passed since Mission 65, but we have never
given up. We have fought to re-establish the truth and to ask
for respect for human rights, constituting ourselves as civil
parties. Now we await the final judgment".
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