Interior Minister Marco Minniti credits his ‘desert diplomacy’ with stopping the flow of migrants to Italy.
- By
- Politico
To his admirers, Marco Minniti, Italy’s powerful interior minister, is the mastermind who solved Europe’s migration problem.
To his critics, he’s the unscrupulous architect of a secret deal with North African militias and thus responsible for severe human rights violations of refugees trapped in Libyan detention centers.
During a shipwreck, five people died, including a newborn child. According to the German NGO Sea-Watch, which has saved 58 migrants, the violent behavior of the Libyan coast guard caused the death of five persons.
/ AFP PHOTO / Alessio Paduano (Photo credit should read ALESSIO PADUANO/AFP/Getty Images)
Since he took office in December 2016, the 61-year-old former communist from Calabria, who spent the first two decades of his career trying not to make headlines, has turned himself into a polarizing protagonist of the…