Ship with Sudan refugees docks in Sicily

ROME, July 12, 2004 (AP) — Italian authorities granted docking permission Monday to a German aid ship that had been wandering the Mediterranean for three weeks with African asylum seekers aboard, news reports said. The decision ended an international standoff over where the boat could land.

The ship docked at Porto Empedocle on the southern coast of Sicily, where a bus was waiting to transfer the asylum seekers to a holding center in the nearby city of Agrigento, the Italian news agency ANSA said.

All but one of the 37 passengers, scooped up from a dinghy on June 20 by the German ship, are Sudanese – many reportedly fleeing the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan. The other passenger is from Sierra Leone.

Italian Coast Guard motorboats had escorted Cap Anamur, a ship run by a Germany-based aid group of the same name, toward the port Sunday but blocked it from docking.

The Italian Interior Ministry said Sunday that the ship’s captain had requested help, signaling “he was no longer able to guarantee control of the ship and command of the crew,” and was concerned about the “psychic-physical” well-being of the refugees.

A priest who had gone aboard at one point said some of the passengers were so desperate during the odyssey that they had begun threatening to jump into the sea.

The ministry expressed determination to crack down on illegal trafficking in clandestine immigrants. Italian officials were planning to question the ship’s captain.