Back in 2018, when he was still Italian Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini blocked an NGO migrant-rescue ship from docking at an Italian port to offload its cargo of cultural enrichment. A progressive prosecutor in Sicily took it upon himself to lay a charge of kidnapping against Mr. Salvini for refusing to allow all those puir wee bairns to debark. For the past two years the wheels of Italian “justice” have been grinding ever-so-slowly against the former interior minister (see previous posts Matteo Salvini: I Feel Sorry for the Prosecutor of Agrigento, Matteo Salvini to be Prosecuted, and Giorgia Meloni: “Italy is Treated Like the World’s Laughingstock”).
Now it seems Mr. Salvini’s trial will be coming up shortly, based on what he says in the following video. Many thanks to FouseSquawk for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | If you don’t give in, you can count on the fact that even in the face of — | |
| 00:05 | if needed — 18 trials, I won’t give in. Italy and the Italian people | |
| 00:09 | come first. If half of Italy stops — | |
| 00:13 | in fact, almost of the offices are closed, businesses closed, shops are closed, | |
| 00:17 | the courts are closed, but I have received a summons | |
| 00:21 | to court in Catania for July 4. | |
| 00:25 | The 4th of July. You recall the famous “kidnapping” | |
| 00:29 | for having blocked the landing of 100 immigrants | |
| 00:33 | in an Italian port for four days, and at this moment | |
| 00:37 | everything is closed in order to combat | |
| 00:41 | the virus. It is strange that the Salvini trial and… I will have | |
| 00:45 | the good fortune, the joy and the possibility | |
| 00:49 | on July 4 to be in the splendid Catania, a city, moreover, that I adore, | |
| 00:53 | for… the first phase | |
| 00:57 | of a trial that seemed to me incredible before the virus, | |
| 01:01 | and seems to me even more incredible now that the virus in progress… |
I have a new name for the virus, “Kung Flu.”
Err, kidnapping is when you force someone to go to some place, and hold them there against their will. The puir wee kids could have easily gone back to the port where they set off from, about which I’m sure Mr Salvini would not have had the slightest complaint…
Ps if this is “kidnapping”, then could the same not be said about anyone not allowed to enter the country?