Migrants on board the ‘Mare Ionio’ to disembark at Lampedusa
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The 49 migrants on board the Italian NGO rescue ship ‘Mare Ionio’ will be disembarking at Lampedusa on the orders of Guardia di Finanza.
The ‘Mare Ionio’ was embroiled in another controversy with Deputy Italian Prime Minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.
He had insisted that the rescued migrants on board the ship flying the Italian flag would not be allowed to enter Italy, saying that the ship gave false information to the Italian authorities to be allowed to do this.
Salvini then declared that the Mare Ionio had been seized and those who did wrong will pay.
On Monday the Mediterranea NGO that runs the vessel asked the Italian authorities to assign a port of safety before heading towards Lampedusa.
On the same day, Interior Ministry Undersecretary Nicola Molteni said that the rescue should have been coordinated by the Libyan authorities as it took place in Libyan waters and the migrants taken back to Libya.
Prosecutors in Agrigento on Tuesday opened a probe into favouring clandestine immigration by the Mare Ionio.
Libyan Navy Spokesman Admiral Ayob Amr Ghasem confirmed that the Mare Ionio acted improperly in rescuing the migrants from a sinking dinghy. He said they contacted the Libyan coast guard only after picking up the migrants, and not before as they should have.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on the issue said that as was done in the past, Italy will resolve this too.
The ship, the Mare Ionio, entered the port of the island of Lampedusa on Tuesday evening after saving the asylum seekers, including 12 minors, in waters off the coast of Libya on Monday.
Salvini has now created a new working group made up of experts and officials from Italy’s police forces to evaluate the situation regarding migrant arrivals after he issued a new directive on this issue on Monday.
The directive regards the procedures in dealing with rescues in the Mediterranean following what Salvini has described as an illegal intervention by the ‘Mare Ionio’.
The directive said Italy was not obliged to assign a ‘place of safety’ under international law if a vessel “deliberately and autonomously” heads toward Italy. It also stressed Italy’s coast is not the only place ships can head to after a rescue, saying ports in Libya, Tunisia and Malta are often nearer.
