BERLIN - Celebrities and politicians in Germany voiced support Sunday for the captain of a humanitarian rescue ship who was detained in Italy after defying the country’s anti-migrant interior minister by taking 40 migrants into Italian waters and then to a port. The 31-year-old captain, Carola Rackete, was arrested early Saturday after her ship, the Sea-Watch 3, rammed an Italian police motorboat blocking its path to the dock at Italy’s Lampedusa island. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW“Italy is at the heart of the European Union, a founding state of the European Union,” Steinmeier told German public broadcaster ZDF in an interview to be broadcast later Sunday, according to the dpa news agency. At Italy’s insistence, five fellow European Union nations said they would take the remaining 40 migrants who landed on Lampedusa. On Sunday, another Italian coast guard boat was escorting 40 severely dehydrated migrants to tiny Lampedusa after the rescue ship of a Spanish humanitarian group spotted the migrants’ boat at sea, according to the group.

Source: thestar June 30, 2019 09:46 UTC