Rome (AFP)
Italian justice ordered Tuesday the landing in Lampedusa, Sicily, migrants collected by the Open Arms and the sequestration of the Spanish ship, have learned from judicial sources.
The prosecutor of Agrigento, Luigi Patronaggio, after an inspection of the judicial police and two doctors, decided that, given the situation on board, the survivors were to be disembarked in the next hours on the small Sicilian island.
The prosecutor also took the decision to pre-seize the ship of the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, in the context of an investigation against X for kidnapping of persons, omission and refusal of official acts, including the Minister of Justice. Interior Matteo Salvini said on Facebook that it is aimed directly.
"If anyone thinks to scare me with the umpteenth complaint and request for a trial, he is mistaken: it would be a joke to have managed to convince Spain to send a ship (to recover migrants) and now to to work to land them in Italy and to try the Minister of the Interior who continues to defend the borders of the country, "he said on Facebook.
The prosecutor's decision was announced shortly after the departure from Spain of a military ship on which the hundred or so migrants remaining on board the Open Arms were supposed to be transhipped.
Madrid had made this decision after a dozen migrants had flung themselves into the water in a desperate gesture to rally the Italian island.
Since the ship was parked since Thursday a few hundred meters from the coast of Lampedusa, migrants were denied access to the island by the Italian authorities, although six European countries (France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania and Spain) are committed to welcoming them.
Rescued off the coast of Libya by the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, some of these migrants have been on board the boat for 19 days, as well as those rescued by SeaWatch3 in late December before landing in Malta on 9 January.
© 2019 AFP