Judges in Sicily have acquitted Italy’s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini of charges of kidnapping and dereliction of duty after he refused to let a Spanish migrant rescue ship dock in an Italian port in 2019, keeping the people onboard at sea for days.

The case dates back to a time when Salvini, head of the far-right political party Lega, served as the interior minister during the first government of the then prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, from 2018-19.

One of Salvini’s first moves after he took office was to declare Italian ports closed to rescue ships engaged in saving people fleeing Libya. There were subsequently 25 standoffs between rescue vessels and Italian authorities, some of which became the focus of investigations.

Early in August 2019, Salvini blocked the humanitarian rescue boat Open Arms, carrying 147 refugees, from docking in a port, forcing it to anchor off the island of Lampedusa while conditions onboard deteriorated, resulting, among other things, in a scabies outbreak. During the standoff, some people threw themselves overboard in desperation as the captain pleaded for a safe, close port.

After a 19-day ordeal, the people that had been picked up at sea were finally able to disembark on the orders of a local prosecutor.

Salvini, who was forced out of his position as interior minister shortly after the affair, was investigated on allegations of kidnapping and dereliction of duty.

“I have kept my promises, combating mass immigration and reducing departures, landings and deaths at sea,” Salvini said on Friday before the ruling.

Prosecutors, who had requested a six-year prison sentence, argued: “The duty to save lives at sea is a responsibility of states and takes precedence over norms and bilateral agreements aimed at combating irregular migration.”

However, after a three-year trial, culminating in 24 hearings that included the testimony of 45 witnesses, including the Hollywood actor Richard Gere, who had visited the ship in solidarity during the standoff, judges in the Sicilian capital, Palermo, did not find the evidence presented by the prosecutors compelling enough to warrant the minister’s conviction.

Salvini, who now serves as infrastructure and transport minister and deputy prime minister in a coalition government with the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party, had always denied the charges and insisted he was proud of what he did in order to “to defend Italy’s borders”.

“Today is a beautiful day for Italy,’’ Salvini told reporters outside the courtroom after the verdict. “Today the judges have said that we have done our duty, that defending the borders is not a crime but a right.”

Before the verdict, he rallied supporters to engage in public demonstrations against what he labelled a “political trial”.

Nationalist politicians across Europe have weighed in on Salvini’s behalf, from France’s Marine Le Pen to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

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Orbán tweeted “justice for Salvini” on Thursday alongside a photo of himself and others holding up T-shirts emblazoned with Salvini’s face in a mock-up “wanted” poster.

Meloni expressed “great satisfaction” over the ruling, which she said proved that the accusations were “unfounded and surreal.”

Oscar Camps, founder of the Spanish NGO Open Arms, said he hoped prosecutors would appeal against the verdict.

“With this trial we wanted to restore the dignity of the 147 people who were held on board and deprived of their liberty for 20 days,” he said.

“We were stopped from carrying out our work during those weeks while we were off the coast of Lampedusa and unable to reach a safe port … saving lives is what Open Arms has been doing for the past 10 years, what we have been doing up until today and what we will carry on doing tomorrow. Our work will not be stopped.”