Mediatic tension and suspicions
connected to a trial can produce verbal violence and threats,
Giuseppe Santalucia, the head of the National Association of
Magistrates (ANM), the judiciary's union, said on Friday after
one of the prosecutors in Palermo who requested a six-year jail
term for Deputy Premier and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini in
the Open Arms case was given a security detail due to the
threats she had received.
"If a climate of mediatic tension is created around a trial, the
effects can be these.
"Trials must take place in a climate that is as serene as
possible for everyone's benefit", Santalucia told ANSA.
"Operations that create an aura of suspicion around a trial can
have this type of impact: attacks on people, therefore
magistrates, with verbal violence and threats", Santalucia said,
urging everyone involved to have "wisdom" because "controversies
are only damaging and prejudicial".
Palermo prosecutor Giorgia Righi, one of the State attorneys on
the Open Arms case and a member of the DDA anti-mafia
investigative division, was assigned a security detail, judicial
sources said Friday.
She was the only State attorney on the team following the case
who had not been given protection yet.
The Palermo State attorneys last month asked for six years'
imprisonment for former interior minister and current Deputy
Premier and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini on charges of
kidnapping and refusal to perform official acts for having
prevented, five years ago, the disembarkation from the Spanish
NGO rescue ship Open Arms of 147 migrants in Lampedusa.
A hearing of the trial is scheduled on Friday.
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