A court in Sicily found Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini not guilty of kidnap for detaining 100 migrants aboard a humanitarian rescue ship in 2019 incident when he was interior minister.

“I am happy. After three years, Lega has won, Italy has won. Defending the homeland is not a crime but a right. I will go forward with more determination than before,” Salvini said following the verdict.

In August 2019, an NGO ship called Open Arms was carrying 147 migrants from the Libyan coast when Salvini prevented it from docking on the Italian island of Lampedusa.

The Open Arms remained at sea for almost three weeks, with the NGO reporting those on board endured dire circumstances leading to medical emergencies and deteriorated mental health. Some threw themselves overboard, and several minors were evacuated during the standoff.

Eventually, the prosecutor in the Sicilian city of Agrigento, Luigi Patronaggio, ordered the vessel to be preventively seized after inspecting it. The remaining 89 people onboard were allowed to disembark.

Salvini, who leads the anti-migrant, Euroskeptic Lega party, has argued that the then-government of Giuseppe Conte backed him fully in his mission to “close the ports” of Italy to rescue ships carrying migrants found at sea.

Arriving at the courthouse on Friday morning, he said it was a beautiful day “because I am proud to have defended my country. I would do what I did again.”

Last week, he told a rally that “defending the borders, the dignity, the laws, the honour of a country cannot ever be a crime.”

Open Arms’ Italian lawyer, Arturo Salerni, has argued Salvini failed in his duty as a public official to protect the human rights of those on board the ship. Prosecutors during the trial say that those stranded at sea should have had their human rights protected over “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,” Prosecutor Geri Ferrara told the court in September.

Meloni’s support

Salvini had said he would be unlikely to step down in the case of a guilty verdict over five years, which would have automatically barred him from office.

He has the support of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who earlier this year said in a post on X that “turning the duty to protect Italy’s borders from illegal immigration into a crime is a very serious precedent.”

She never indicated she would expect his resignation, but on Wednesday, she told the Italian Senate that Salvini has the “solidarity of the entire government”.

Meloni has moved to crack down on migration since taking power in 2022, striking deals with northern African countries in a bid to prevent migrants from departing and setting up a landmark scheme with Albanian leader Edi Rama to process asylum applications in so-called “return hubs” away from Italian soil.

The deal has gained traction across European member states, although it has since become a legal nightmare for Meloni after 24 asylum seekers who were sent to Albania were promptly sent back to Italy after a Roman court declared the scheme unlawful.

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The standoff between Open Arms and Salvini was one of over 20 during his tenure as interior minister from 2018 to 2019, where he took a hardline stance against migration. At the time, he repeatedly closed Italian ports to humanitarian rescue ships and accused NGOs that rescued migrants of effectively encouraging human traffickers.

In one incident, now-MEP Carola Rackete entered the port of Lampedusa against Salvini’s orders after declaring a state of emergency on her boat.

She was soon arrested on charges of illegal migration that were eventually dropped.