Italy's supreme Cassation Court on
Friday ruled in favour of an appeal filed by a group of migrants
who were not allowed to disembark from the Italian coast guard's
Diciotti vessel that had rescued them at sea on August 16-25
2018 as part of then-interior minister Matteo Salvini's
closed-ports policy.
The appeal demanded that the Italian government compensate the
refugees on the grounds that they had been deprived of their
personal freedom.
The Cassation's panel of judges sent the case back to a regular
court saying the tribunal will need to decide the amount of
compensation to be granted to the migrants.
The coast guard ship picked up 190 migrants on August 16 2018
from an overcrowded boat off Lampedusa after they were refused
entry to Malta.
Thirteen of them were taken to Lampedusa because of serious
medical conditions but the remaining 177, mostly from Eritrea,
remained stranded on the boat for 10 days.
Salvini was at the time probed for allegedly abducting the
migrants on the ship.
However the Senate, of which Salvini was a member, rejected a
request to investigate the former interior minister filed by the
tribunal of ministers tasked with cases involving members of the
executive.
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