Sea-Watch 3 captain arrested

The Sea-Watch 3 charity ship carrying dozens of migrants rescued off Libya forced its way into the Italian port of Lampedusa on Friday night after a lengthy standoff, the charity said. Sea-Watch spokesman Ruben Neugebauer said the boat’s German captain Carola Rackete, 31, was arrested and that the 40 migrants were still on board after the vessel docked.

Rackete was arrested by police for refusing to obey a military vessel, after maneuvering the ship into port without permission. She offered no resistance and was escorted off the vessel without handcuffs. The ship docked despite the best efforts of a coastguard boat to prevent her from doing so by sailing back and forth between the vessel and the pier, according to the Repubblica daily. While five European countries on Friday agreed to take in the migrants, permission for the Dutch-flagged Sea-Watch 3 to enter the port and disembark the migrants did not come.

Sources at the interior ministry, headed by Italy’s far-right Matteo Salvini, said he was waiting for precise guarantees on “numbers, timelines and means” of the migrant redistribution before allowing them off. “Even though in the afternoon the prosecution has opened an in - vestigation against me, at the same time they notified us that they will not help to bring the rescued off the ship,” Rackete said in a video statement on Twitter.