On hearing the verdict, Salvini clenched his fists in a sign of victory and hugged his girlfriend, film producer Francesca Verdini, Ansa news agency reported.

The trial began in September 2021, focusing on a case when Salvini, as interior minister, had sought to stop irregular migrants crossing the Mediterranean by blocking Italy’s ports.

He had ordered an NGO ship called Open Arms to be prevented from docking on the island of Lampedusa after it had picked up 147 migrants off the Libyan coast.

The Open Arms remained at sea for almost three weeks, and the health situation of the migrants on board seriously deteriorated.

Eventually, the prosecutor in the Sicilian city of Agrigento, Luigi Patronaggio, ordered the vessel to be preventatively seized after inspecting it and noting the “difficult situation on board”.

The captain of Open Arms and some of those rescued from sea were civil parties in the case, which began in September 2021.

The three female prosecutors in the case have been under police protection after being harassed online and receiving threats.

One of them, Geri Ferrara, told the court in September that human rights had to prevail over the “protection of state sovereignty”.

“A person stranded at sea must be saved and it is irrelevant whether they are classified as a migrant, a crewmember or a passenger”, she said.