In a video message shared on social media on Tuesday, Meloni said she was suspected by prosecutors of embezzlement and aiding and abetting a crime.

Osama Najim – also known as Almasri – is the head of Libya’s judicial police and the director of an infamous detention centre in Mitiga, near Tripoli.

Mr Najim was arrested in Italy on 21 January and unexpectedly freed days later “due to a legal technicality”, the interior ministry said.

The ICC, which said it had not been consulted, swiftly issued another arrest warrant for Mr Najim and demanded an explanation from the Italian authorities.

In the video, Meloni said the Rome appeals court released Mr Najim because the ICC warrant had not been sent to the Italian justice ministry.

“At that point, so as not to let him go free on Italian territory, we decided to expel him and repatriate him immediately, with a special flight,” Meloni said.

Last week, Justice Minister Carlo Nordio said that Mr Najim had been expelled because of the “danger” he posed – a comment which was derided by the opposition.

The decision to free Mr Najim was heavily criticised by the opposition and NGOs such as Amnesty International, which said Mr Najim was guilty of “horrific violations committed with total impunity”.

Videos that showed a jubilant crowd welcoming Mr Najim as he stepped off an Italian government plane in Tripoli caused particular uproar.

Meloni said that Nordio, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and the cabinet undersecretary for intelligence matters, Alfredo Mantovano, had also been placed under investigation. Being placed under investigation in Italy does not mean that formal charges will necessarily follow.

In a defiant tone, the Italian PM appeared to hint at political motives for the investigation.

She pointed out the lawyer who filed the complaint, Luigi Li Gotti, was a former left-wing politician, while the prosecutor leading the case, Francesco Lo Voi, recently investigated Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini on an unrelated matter.

Meloni ended the video saying that she could not be “blackmailed or intimidated”.

“This may be why I’m unpopular among those who don’t want Italy to change and improve,” she said. “But that’s precisely the reason I intend to continue on my way, protecting Italians, especially when the nation’s safety is at stake, head held high with no fear.”

Matteo Renzi of the opposition party Italy Alive (IV) – who was among the first to denounce Mr Najim’s release – said he felt Meloni was “exploiting” the investigation to “feed her usual victim complex”.

Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the far-right, anti-migrant Brothers of Italy party, has headed Italy’s ruling right-wing coalition since 2022.

She has repeatedly vowed to crack down on immigration and has pledged to stop boats heading to Italy from North Africa, vowing to put an end to illegal departures and human trafficking.

Meloni, like other leaders before her, has worked with Libyan authorities and militias, providing them with financial and technical support under controversial agreements to tackle illegal immigration, including training and funding for the Libyan coast guard which intercepts migrant boats.

Prosecutors in Sicily have asked judges to sentence him to six years in jail.

Salvini, who’s leader of the right-wing Lega party and a government ally of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, has already said he will lodge an appeal if found guilty.

He has pushed back against the accusations, repeatedly alleging the judges were being “political” and maintaining his only guilt was in wanting to “protect Italy”.

One of the prosecutors, 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.

An NGO ship called Open Arms was carrying 147 migrants picked up off the Libyan coast when it was prevented from docking on the Italian island of Lampedusa on the orders of Salvini, who was interior minister at the time.

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”.

Salvini maintained that the then-government of Giuseppe Conte had backed him fully in his mission to “close the ports” of Italy to NGO rescue ships.

PM Giorgia Meloni has stood by her deputy prime minister, saying he had her and her government’s “solidarity”.

“Turning the duty to protect Italy’s borders from illegal immigration into a crime is a very serious precedent,” she posted on X earlier this year.

She has never indicated that she would expect his resignation in case of a guilty verdict, and for his part Salvini has said he would not step down.

In recent months he has frequently referenced the trial and the forthcoming verdict in social media posts and during public speeches and interviews.

“I want to believe that Italy is a normal country, and in a normal country someone who defends borders isn’t found guilty,” he told Italian media earlier this week. If that was the case, he said, “it would be terrible news for the country and a reason to celebrate for people smugglers and enemies of Italy”.

He has also alleged that the Italian judiciary was “politicised” and that some magistrates were “clearly following left-wing politics”.

Elly Schlein, leader of the centre-left opposition Democratic Party, accused Salvini of “spreading propaganda and fuelling a serious institutional clash”.

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

Members of Salvini’s Lega party have rallied around him and are preparing demonstrations in his support.

On Wednesday, Lega MEPs turned up at a European Parliament session in Strasbourg wearing t-shirts that read “Guilty of defending Italy” – a slogan Salvini has used in the past.

“A conviction would be an incredibly serious matter,” said Lega deputy secretary Andrea Crippa: “It would be like convicting the entire Italian people, the Italian parliament and the elected government.”

Lombardy’s Lega party president, Attilio Fontana, said a guilty verdict would be “so aberrant, even from a judicial point of view, that I don’t even want to think about it”.

Others outside Italy have waded into the debate too.

“That mad prosecutor should be the one who goes to prison for six years,” Elon Musk tweeted, while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a close ally of Salvini, called the trial “shameful”.

If convicted, Salvini has said he will appeal against the verdict “all the way to the Supreme Court of Cassation” – Italy’s highest court.

That process could take months and Salvini’s position in the government and parliament would be unaffected.

Milei’s sister Karina also received citizenship, ANSA reported on Saturday, which said the applications were fast-tracked by Rome.

Riccardo Magi, a lawmaker from the opposition party +Europa, condemned the decision, calling it “intolerable discrimination” against young Italians who will face years of bureaucracy to obtain citizenship.

“Millions of Italians born in Italy, raised here, who studied, worked, and pay taxes in this country – unlike President Milei – will face an arduous journey to gain citizenship,” Magi said in a video posted on social media.

Current law requires foreigners to live in Italy for 10 years before applying for citizenship, and even children born in Italy to foreign parents must wait until they turn 18 to apply.

While groups like Oxfam Italia have pushed for a reduction in the waiting period to align with other EU countries, like France and Germany, far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has firmly opposed such changes.

Meloni met Milei during a state visit on Friday. The 54-year-old libertarian Argentinian leader also joined Meloni at the Atreju Festival, a right-wing youth event in Rome organised by her Brothers of Italy party.

The two leaders have forged a strong bond due to their ideological similarities.

Last month, Meloni presented Milei with a figurine of him wielding a chainsaw, referencing his 2023 campaign, in which he famously used a chainsaw to signal his intention to reduce the size of government.

Milei is not the first Argentinian president to hold dual Italian citizenship.Mauricio Macri, who served as Argentina’s president from 2015 to 2019, also had an Italian passport.