The failure to include in the investigation file, by the then Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, the report of a navy submarine reporting alleged anomalies by the NGO ship Open Arms did not represent any abuse of office committed by the magistrates against the leader of the League but it is a legitimate act that falls within the discretion of the prosecutors.
With these reasons the investigating judge of Caltanissetta, Emanuela Carrabotta, closed the investigation against the deputy prosecutor of Agrigento, Salvatore Vella (chief prosecutor of Gela since 2 July), the former deputy Cecilia Baravelli (now in Padua) and the prosecutor added from Palermo, Marzia Sabella.
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The affair arises from a complaint by the former vice president of the Senate, Maurizio Gasparri, at the time president of the council for parliamentary immunities, who reported having learned from the press of the existence of a report from a military submarine which reported some irregularities on the part of the NGO Sea Watch which would have supported the ban on entry into territorial waters for which Salvini ended up on trial for kidnapping and omission of official documents.
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Elements which, according to Gasparri, had been kept in the dark from the judges and the council due to parliamentary immunities and authorizations to proceed. Following this, the minister himself filed a complaint and the three magistrates who followed the case were registered in the register of suspects for abuse of office.
A crime which, according to the Nissena prosecutor’s office, was not committed enough to require dismissal. The leader of the League, through his lawyer Giulia Bongiorno, opposed the closure of the case.
The judge, a couple of months after the hearing in which all the parties were heard, accepted the arguments of the defenders of the three magistrates: the lawyers Daniela Posante, Calogero Meli and Lillo Fiorello.
For Vella and Baravelli the investigating judge underlines that the failure to include the report in the file was an act that falls within the discretionary power of the prosecutors in conducting the investigation. Different story for the deputy prosecutor of Palermo, Marzia Sabella, who – according to what the judge writes in the provision – limited herself to transmitting the investigative acts carried out by her colleagues to the court of ministers and it would not have been her responsibility to carry out any act investigation.
