Italian police have arrested the German captain of a ship that brought a group of African would-be immigrants to Sicily and the head of the German humanitarian group that chartered it, a spokeswoman for the Cap Anamur Committee said.
The head of the Cap Anamur Committee, Elias Bierdel, and the ship's captain, Stefan Schmidt, are suspected of aiding illegal immigration, said the spokeswoman, Michaela Schunko.
"We haven't yet had time to discuss this to know how we are going to react to this arrest," she said.
Italian authorities earlier on Monday allowed the ship, the Cap Anamur, to dock in the southern Sicilian port of Porto Empedocle to drop off the 37 Africans.
The ship had picked up the Africans, believed to be mostly Sudanese from the wartorn Darfur region, from a dinghy on the Mediterranean sea on June 20. It then headed to Malta, where it landed some other castaways from Somalia.
Italian officials said that under European Union regulations, Malta was responsible for handling any asylum request since it was their first port of call. For their part the Maltese authorities said that when the ship docked in their country, they were unaware the Africans were on board.
But a spokesman for the German interior ministry said the 37 Africans would be ineligible for refugee status since "an asylum application in Germany requires one to have reached German territory."
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