The incident occurred in August last year and is the third similar incident for which Italian prosecutors wanted to prosecute Salvini.
During his 14-month tenure as interior minister, Salvini repeatedly stopped ships carrying rescued migrants from landing.
Matteo Salvini himself has previously said that he encourages the issue to be tried in court and says that Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte supported his decision to prevent migrants from going ashore.
He also believes that his decision to stop boats put pressure on other EU countries to agree to receive the migrants.