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German rescue ship “Sea-Watch 4” arrested
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The “Sea-Watch 4” was stopped in the port of Palermo
Quelle: pa / dpa / Hannah Wallace Bowman
The Italian authorities hold the refugee ship “Sea-Watch 4” in Sicily. With “weak reasons,” says the chief of operations. One claim is that rescuing people does not correspond to the ship’s record.
reAccording to the aid organizations involved, the Italian authorities stopped the rescue ship “Sea-Watch 4” in the port of Palermo.
“The flimsy explanations show once again that it is not a question of verifying the safety of the ship, but of a selective prevention of the maritime rescue of civilians in the central Mediterranean,” operations chief Philipp Hahn said on Sunday.
As part of the so-called state control of the port, Italian inspectors spent 11 hours searching for complaints, after which they arrested “Sea-Watch 4,” said aid organizations Sea-Watch, United4Rescue and Doctors without Borders.
The main allegation was that saving human lives did not correspond to the registry of the ship. The “Sea-Watch 4” had too many life jackets on board and the sewage system was not designed for the number of rescued.
The boat meets all safety requirements.
In fact, the ship meets all the safety requirements of the German flag state, as confirmed by German Sea-Watch authorities only in July, according to the statement. The “Sea-Watch 4” prevents a civilian rescue ship from returning to the mission for the fifth time. “These inspections are politically motivated and are for the sole purpose of preventing rescue operations.” The organization wrote on Twitter: “With this arbitrary blockade, @guardiacostiera is deliberately putting human lives at risk!”
The operators of the “Sea-Watch 4” had previously feared that he would be arrested, as happened with other marine rescue boats. The Italian authorities are not concerned with the safety of the ships, “but with the systematic prevention of rescue operations,” Sea-Watch said before the decision was made. In the past, there have also been alleged technical flaws in shutting down the rescue ships.
The “Sea-Watch 4” was in the port of Palermo after delivering 353 refugees to a quarantine ferry on September 2. The crew of the rescue ship was in quarantine in the port of the Sicilian city due to the coronavirus pandemic.
