German ship brings 400 migrants to Italy

Pozzallo - The German migrant aid ship Sea-Eye 4 has again been assigned a safe harbor in Italy. As the Regensburg organization Sea-Eye announced, the crew with the more than 400 immigrants on board is allowed to call at the port of the Sicilian city of Pozzallo.

Sea-Eye expressed relief, but also criticized the fact that the migrants, 150 of whom were minors, had to stay on board for two more nights, as Pozzallo was around two days away from their current location. The Sea-Eye 4 had previously reached the waters of Palermo and waited there for a port to be assigned.

Migrant aid organizations want to go to Europe
According to its own information, the crew took 415 people on board in six missions within four days. “Dear EU member states, give these people security now! They have the right to it,” wrote Sea-Eye on Twitter. From the perspective of the migrant aid organizations, there is usually only security in Europe.

A spokeswoman for SOS Méditerranée, which operates the ship Ocean Viking, said at the end of April, that an inquiry would first be made to the Libyan authorities according to international law. But even if they agreed to take the people from their ship, the organization would refuse, the spokeswoman emphasized. "Libya is not a safe country, so we then send inquiries to the Maltese and Italian authorities." Experience has shown that Italy has recently given in and accepted the migrants, while Malta has remained negative.

Proceedings against Carola Rackete dropped
Meanwhile, a court has approved a motion by the Agrigento public prosecutor's office to suspend the case against German captain Carola Rackete, a spokesman for the organization Sea-Watch confirmed to the AFP news agency on Wednesday. Rackete was arrested in Italy in June 2019 after she steered the Sea-Watch 3 with dozens of migrants on board, contrary to official instructions, into a port on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

For Sea-Watch, however, the raising of the “Antifa” flag on the Sea-Watch also has 4 consequences. The Evangelical Lutheran Church Celle-Klein Hehlen stopped funding the ship after a year and a half. "The church council deeply regrets that this one-sided and overarching politicization obscures the humanitarian purpose of the action and that apparently no corrective influence is exercised on the part of the sponsor", wrote the community in a letter to the action alliance "United4Rescue", which is part of the Funding the ship was involved.

Source: Junge Freiheit