Among the witnesses listed in the trial is American actor Richard Gere, who visited migrants while waiting off the coast of Italy, which, for Salvini, is an example of the lack of seriousness of the charges leveled against him.
Speaking to reporters after the first hearing in Palermo on Saturday, he questioned, “Let’s talk about Richard Gere. You tell me how serious a trial is, where someone has to testify about my inferiority to Hollywood. comes for.”
The day before he joked that if Gere was officially named a witness, he would ask for an autograph for his mother.
Other evidence used against Salvini includes communication records from an NGO ship and emergency calls from the Italian Coast Guard when he assigned the port of Lampedusa as a port, to determine at what point and in what form. Salvini intervened.
Salvini has repeatedly denied the hijacking allegations, but has admitted to preventing the ship from docking in Italy, saying it was his duty as Minister of the Interior.
They argue that since the open arms vessel was Spanish flagged, the migrants should have been taken to Spain.
His lawyer Giulia Bongiorno, who had previously represented Rafael Solecito in his trial with Amanda Knox for the murder of Meredith Kercher, has argued that the trial should not even take place under Italian jurisdiction as the ship is Spanish and a Spanish- The flagged ship did not have the right to dock in an Italian port without permission.
.