Matteo Salvini: Italian deputy prime minister can be tried for kidnapping, court rules

Leader of the League Party refused to let 150 migrants disembark from a rescue ship which had been docked in Sicily for six days

Matteo Salvini is the leader of the League party and is currently the deputy prime minister and interior minister (Reuters)

An Italian court has ruled that Italy’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, Matteo Salvini, can face trial for kidnapping.

Mr Salvini was placed under investigation for alleged abuse of power and holding people against their will after he refused to let 150 migrants disembark from a rescue ship which had been docked in Sicily for six days last year.

The migrants were eventually allowed to land, but since then Mr Salvini has tightened the screws and is refusing to let any rescue ships into Italian ports.

"I risk between 3 and 15 years in jail for having blocked illicit migrants from coming to Italy. I am speechless," Mr Salvini wrote on Twitter.

"I ask the Italian people: Should I continue to be the minister, exercising my rights and duties, or should I ask this or that court to [decide] immigration policy?"

A special tribunal, which reviews investigations involving government ministers, overturned a previous recommendation by prosecutors to drop the case.

Following the court's move, Italy's upper-house Senate will now be called on to decide whether Mr Salvini should be tried.

The deputy prime minister said he was confident he had the support of the senators from his party but the support of his coalition partners, the populist Five Star Movement, is less than certain.

One of the founding principles of the Five Star Movement has been to demand the resignation of any politician who is under investigation.

Two years ago when interior minister Angelino Alfano was under investigation the Five Star Movement called for his resignation.

The choice for Five Star Movement could potentially be between undermining their own ideological and moral position or threatening their current coalition agreement with Mr Salvini’s League Party.

Mr Salvini has been adamant that he will not alter his stance.

"Let me be totally clear. I will not change my position in the slightest. Boats, little boats, big boats. No one will get off the boats in Italy," he said.

Additional reporting by agencies