By Alvise Armellini
ROME (Reuters) – A group of Eritrean migrants who were held on an Italian coast guard vessel for 10 days in 2018 are entitled to compensation from the government, Italy’s top appeals court has ruled, triggering the fury of right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
The case concerns more than 150 migrants who in August 2018 were blocked at sea on the Diciotti coast guard vessel as then-Interior Minister Matteo Salvini refused to let them disembark in the Sicilian port of Catania.
An unspecified number of the migrants, from Eritrea, requested compensation and on Thursday the Court of Cassation ruled in their favour.
“As a result of this decision, the government will have to compensate – with the money of honest Italian citizens who pay taxes – people who attempted to enter Italy illegally,” Meloni wrote on X on Friday.
“Having to spend money on this, when we don’t have enough resources to do everything that should be right to do, is very frustrating,” she added.
In the 2018 episode Salvini eventually relented after Albania and Ireland offered to accept some of the migrants and Italy’s Catholic Church agreed to take responsibility for the rest at no cost to the taxpayer.
The Cassation overturned decisions by two lower courts, which in 2019 and 2024 had ruled against the migrants.
“Government actions can never be considered exempt from judicial review when they go beyond the limits imposed by the Constitution and the law,” the appeals court said.
Prosecutors had sought in 2018 to investigate Salvini for abuse of power and kidnapping of the migrants, but the Italian Senate denied them permission, ending the case.
Salvini is now deputy prime minister and transport minister in Meloni’s government, which has taken a hard line on immigration and has clashed several times with the judiciary, including on a stalled plan to send sea migrants to Albania.
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, editing by Gavin Jones and Angus MacSwan)
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