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December 12, 2020 "I am calm, calm and proud".

Matteo Salvini said this on his arrival at Bicocca prison for the second preliminary hearing of the trial on the Gregoretti case.

And he adds: "We are in a bunker room that usually hosts Mafia trials. I will intervene by reporting some data from my ministry. We have saved lives and protected a country, what did not happen later: because after me there were drowned deaths , rights denied ".

"I am only sorry - he added - of having to waste time for judges, lawyers, law enforcement agencies in a bunker court which is usually used for mafia trials. I am an Italian citizen who respects what justice asks me for answer for what I promised Italians to do. Stop human trafficking and the business of illegal immigration without hurting anyone ".

Salvini - accused of kidnapping for delays in disembarking from the Gregoretti ship of 131 migrants in Augusta on 31 July 2019 - is accompanied by his lawyer Giulia Bongiorno.

The latter arrived with a trolley full of papers.

"The video in which Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte talks about the government and the role of the executive in the decision on the landing of migrants in Italy as a shared idea is in the defensive memory already filed in the proceedings" said the lawyer. 



Today the other two witnesses called, former ministers Elisabetta Trenta and Danilo Toninelli, will be heard by the gup Nunzio Sarpietro.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Ministers Luigi Di Maio and Luciana Lamorgese will also be heard in the coming weeks.

Dozens of accredited journalists are kept outside the bunker under a Red Cross tent.


In court in Catania, head held high.

pic.twitter.com/8FPpeA3DjA

- Matteo Salvini (@matteosalvinimi) December 12, 2020