ROME: After calling Germany’s chancellor a “fool”, billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday waded into a fraught debate over the hard-right Italian government’s migrant policy, prompting outrage from lawyers and the opposition.

Judges on Monday rejected the detention of a second group of migrants transferred to Italian-run centres in Albania, referring the case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

An initial transfer of migrants to the centres last month was similarly blocked by judges, who cited a recent ECJ ruling questioning the way Italy designates countries as “safe” for migrant repatriations.

“These judges need to go,” commented Musk — the world’s richest man who played a major role in the re-election of Donald Trump as US president — on the X social network that he owns.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right, anti-immigration League party, responded in English: “Elon Musk is right.” But the centre-left Democratic Party branded the comment as an “unacceptable interference” in Italian affairs.

Lawyer Ernesto Carbone, who sits on the High Council of the Judiciary, condemned Musk as one of the “new oligarchs” aspiring to “control world politics and who are a danger to democracy”. Italy’s National Magistrates’ Association likewise expressed its “stupefaction” at the tech titan’s intervention.

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2024