The Latest: Migrant ship captain in Sicily for court hearing
ROME (AP) — The Latest on migration issues in Europe (all times local):
3:05 p.m.
The German captain of a humanitarian rescue boat has arrived in Sicily for a court hearing on whether she should stay under house arrest.
Carola Rackete waved to supporters after she stepped off an Italian border police motorboat at Porto Empedocle. Police then whisked her to Agrigento, Sicily, where a judge later Monday will question her. On Saturday her ship Sea Watch-3 struck a police boat while docking at Lampedusa, an Italian island in the Mediterranean, to disembark 40 rescued migrants.
Italy's anti-migrant minister, Matteo Salvini, had denied permission for the ship to dock or disembark the migrants.
Through her lawyers, Rackete has denied wrongdoing, saying the migrants desperately needed to go ashore after 17 days at sea, following Sea-Watch 3's rescue of them.
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12 p.m.
Germany's foreign minister says the captain of a migrant rescue ship in Italian custody should be released because saving lives is a humanitarian act, not criminal.
Heiko Maas told reporters Monday he'd been in contact with Italian authorities to press the case that it is "not acceptable" to criminalize the rescue of migrants in the Mediterranean.
German citizen Carola Rackete has been in custody since Saturday when she defied Italy's anti-migrant interior minister, Matteo Salvini, and port authorities by steering her Sea-Watch 3 ship to Lampedusa's dock so the 40 migrants the ship rescued on June 12 could disembark.
Maas says "sea rescue is no crime, it is a humanitarian act, and therefore anything that does not lead to (her) release would cause considerable irritation."
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10:25 a.m.
The German captain of a humanitarian migrant rescue ship is being taken...