Four very hard lines to express the bewilderment of the judges. They are signed by the first president of the Court of Cassation, Margherita Cassano, who speaks of “unacceptable insults that question the division of powers on which the rule of law is based”.
At the origin of the new distance clash between the judiciary and the government, the decision of the Court of Cassation to accept the appeal of an Eritrean migrant, overturning the verdict of the Court of Appeal of Rome, on the affair of the Diciotti ship.
For ten days, from 16 to 25 August 2018, the then Interior Minister Matteo Salvini prevented the landing in Catania of a group of migrants from the boat of the Coast Guard, who had rescued them off the coast of Lampedusa. Now the Cassation has decided that the government will have to compensate the protagonists of that affair. “Regardless of the disputes on the competent state according to the distribution in SAR areas – the judges of the Supreme Court write – the rescue operations had in fact been hired under the responsibility of an Italian SAR authority, which was held on the basis of the conventional rules to complete them, organizing the landing, ‘in the shortest time reasonably possible”. Government behavior – conclude the judges – has therefore constituted a clear violation of international legislation.
“I was not interested in compensation but that the responsibility of those who implemented that injustice was ascertained”, the comment of the citizen Eritrean author of the appeal. In relation to the Diciotti affair, Salvini was investigated for kidnapping by the Court of Ministers of Palermo, who had asked the Senate for the authorization to proceed against him, rejected with the votes of the then majority.
