Pro-migrant Italian mayor arrested

‘This is absurd but we won’t give up. Riace is, and will remain, a marvellous example of integration’

THE mayor of a town in Italy who has won plaudits from around the world for accepting and integrating migrants has been arrested and accused of encouraging illegal immigration.

Domenico “Mimmo” Lucano is the 60-year-old mayor of Riace, a hilltop town in the southern region of Calabria, which for the last 20 years has been taking in migrants and refugees as a way of making up for decades of depopulation.

His efforts came to be regarded as a model for integration and in 2016 he was named by Fortune magazine as one of the world’s 50 most inspirational personalities.

But yesterday he was placed under house arrest for allegedly aiding illegal immigration.

He was accused of helping to arrange an unspecified number of marriages of convenience between Italian men and migrant women desperate to obtain permission to stay in Italy.

Mr Lucano said he was “shocked” by the arrest warrant, while Giuseppe Gervasi, his deputy, said: “This is absurd but we won’t give up. Riace is, and will remain, a marvellous example of integration.”

Within hours of the arrest being publicised, prominent figures were asking whether the investigation was politically motivated.

Since coming to power in June, Italy’s populist coalition has pledged to repatriate hundreds of thousands of failed asylum seekers.

Matteo Salvini, the country’s interior minister, took to Twitter to comment on the arrest, gleefully asking what would be the reaction of “all the other do-gooders who want to fill Italy with migrants”.

Luigi Di Maio, deputy prime minister and leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, said the government had no role in the arrest.