The German captain of a migrant rescue ship who defied an Italian government ban to dock at the island port of Lampedusa expressed regret yesterday for any alarm caused when her ship trapped a police boat against the quay.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigrant League party, called the incident “a criminal act, an act of war”.
Carola Rackete, who was arrested on Saturday after spending two weeks in international waters with dozens of rescued African migrants, immediately switched off her engines when she realised the Sea-Watch 3 might have got too close to the patrol boat, her lawyer Alessandro Gamberini told Reuters by telephone.
“She is very sorry to have a created a situation of danger and fright among tax police officials. It was a difficult manoeuvre but she always felt she was conducting it in a safe way...  she had been approaching extremely slowly.”
Government vessels had tried to prevent the Sea-Watch 3 docking and one ended up squeezed between the ship and the quay before freeing itself, videos on social media showed.
Rackete, 31, was arrested for resisting a military ship after being denied permission to dock under laws introduced by Salvini to deter non-government rescue ships.
She is being investigated on suspicion of aiding people-smugglers.
Rackete’s boat was impounded and Sea-Watch could be fined up to €50,000 ($57,000).
She has defended her act of “disobedience”, saying that she was compelled to avert a human tragedy.
“It wasn’t an act of violence, but only one of disobedience,” Rackete told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published yesterday as funds poured in for her legal battles.
“The situation was desperate,” she said. “My goal was only to bring exhausted and desperate people to shore. My intention was not to put anyone in danger. I already apologised, and I reiterate my apology.”
A lawyer for Rackete, Alessandro Gamberini, later told DPA that Corriere della Sera had reported his comments as having come directly from Rackete, but he clarified that the German never gave an interview.
Her father Ekkehart Rackete told newspaper group RND he expected her to “be freed under conditions or bail until the beginning of the trial”.
After speaking by phone late on Saturday, Ekkehart Rackete described his daughter as “jolly and in good spirits.
Her arrest sparked a fund-raising appeal by two prominent German TV stars, who had raised some €620,000 ($710,000) by yesterday evening.
Another campaign launched on Facebook by an Italian activist has so far collected some €412,000 – making the tally more than €1mn.
Comedian Jan Boehmermann, who launched the German campaign with show host Klaas Heufer-Umlauf, said in a video posted on YouTube: “We are convinced that someone who saves lives is not a criminal. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply wrong.”
The dreadlocked Rackete has become a left-wing hero in Italy for challenging far-right Interior Minister Salvini’s “closed-ports” policy.
“I didn’t have the right to obey,” she argued. “They were asking me to take them (the migrants) back to Libya.
“From a legal standpoint, these were people fleeing a country at war (and) the law bars you from taking them back there.”
The head of the NGO that operates the ship, Johannes Bayer, said Sea-Watch was “proud of our captain”.
Boehmermann accused Salvini of “abusing rescuers ... in order to turn the mood against refugees, against the EU, and for an inhumane politics”.
Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio, leader of the League’s coalition partner, the 5-Star Movement, said he would propose that boats seized for entering Italian waters illegally should became state property.
Salvini says the European Union has left Italy alone to deal with the arrivals by sea, and the issue has also caused friction with Paris.
After French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner criticised Italy’s approach, Salvini told Sky TG24 television that France should open its ports to two NGO boats that were in the Mediterranean.
“Every country, I reckon, is free to decide who comes in and who doesn’t. Thousands of migrants are pushed back at the Italian border with France,” he said.
The Italian minister said that the Lampedusa arrivals would be divided up between France, Germany, Luxembourg, Finland and Portugal.
Meanwhile, Italian police and coast guard rescued 55 other migrants yesterday, including four infants and three pregnant women in the same area, the Spanish group Proactiva Open Arms and Italian media said.
Proactiva Open Arms said it had identified a fishing boat that had left Libya with 40 more migrants, while Italian media said later there were 55 people on board.
They were picked up by the group and passed to a police speedboat near Lampedusa, which was to take them to Sicily but which in fact transferred 11 who required medical assistance to a coast guard ship.