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#Italy ups ante on #Migrants stand-off

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Populist politics have a habit of getting abstruse quickly. An Italian prosecutor has opened a kidnapping investigation into "unknown persons" for holding 150 migrants onboard a ship docked off Sicily against their will,
write Mark John and Mike Dolan.

Italian deputy PM and interior minister Matteo Salvini (pictured) has stepped proudly forward and declared himself to be among the “unknown persons” in question - he is refusing them entry to Italy until other EU countries agree to take a share.

Not to be outdone on the publicity stakes, his fellow deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio of the 5-Star party is saying Rome will suspend Italy’s 20-billion-euros’ worth of annual funding to the EU if there is no deal on redistributing the migrants at a meeting in Brussels later today.

After the Italian government sought to argue that the Genoa bridge collapse showed that it should be freed from the budget promises it made at European Union level, this is taking the stand-off to a whole new level.

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