Italy’s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini faces up to six years in prison if convicted over his refusal to prevent more than 100 migrants from landing in the country in 2019.
Mr Salvini’s decision while interior minister left the migrant rescue ship stranded at sea for 19 days, with some of those on board desperately throwing themselves overboard.
Prosecutors in the city of Palermo on Saturday requested a six-year jail sentence for the politician in right wing Giorgia Meloni’s administration for alleged kidnapping over the incident.
The remaining 89 people on board the charity migrant rescue boat were eventually allowed to disembark in Lampedusa by a court order, despite Mr Salvini’s closed ports policy.
In a defiant message on social media on Saturday, Mr Salvini wrote: "I would do it all again: defending borders from illegal immigrants is not a crime."
His lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, will make her defence statement in Palermo on October 18, and a first sentence could come by the end of the month.
A conviction, which in Italy is definitive only at the end of a three-stage judicial process, could bar Mr Salvini from holding government office.
Ms Meloni and several ministers of her government have expressed solidarity with the Lega Nord leader, defending his decisions.
Since she stepped into power in 2022, Ms Meloni has pledged a crackdown on migration, aiming to deter would-be refugees from paying smugglers to make the dangerous Mediterranean crossing.
She wrote on X: “It is incredible that a minister of the Italian Republic risks six years in prison for doing his job defending the nation's borders, as required by the mandate received from its citizens."
Mr Salvini maintained a hard line on migration in his tenure as interior minister in the first government of premier Giuseppe Conte, from 2018 to 2019.
He imposed a "closed ports" policy under which Italy refused entry to charity ships that rescued migrants in distress across the Mediterranean and he repeatedly accused humanitarian organisations of effectively encouraging people smuggling.
