MILAN: Italy pressured the Netherlands on Friday to accept 47 migrants, including eight unaccompanied minors, who have spent seven days at sea aboard a humanitarian rescue ship that has been allowed to enter Italian territorial waters due to bad weather conditions.
The German aid group Sea-Watch tweeted that it has received no response to multiple requests for the Dutch-flagged Sea Watch-3 vessel carrying people rescued off Libya on Saturday to access a port. The boat was permitted to enter Italian waters Friday because of deteriorating weather conditions, and the Italian coast guard said it was just off Syracuse, Sicily, flanked by coast guard and financial police boats.
Italy and Malta, the closest EU nations, have both refused to allow entry to rescue vessels operated by humanitarian groups in what they say is a bid to discourage smuggler boats from departing Libya by diminishing the prospect of rescue.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini told reporters in Rome that he sent a letter to the government in the Netherlands officially requesting that they organize landings for the migrants “aboard this vessel that waves a Dutch flag.”
Dutch Migration Minister Mark Harbers said that without the prospect of such a comprehensive solution to how to process migrants rescued at sea that the Netherlands “will not take part in ad-hoc measures.” He added that the ship flying the Dutch flag doesn’t oblige the Netherlands to take action.
European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker’s spokesman said that the commission is in touch with member states, and was watching the events closely.
“Our position is clear: The safety of the people on board must be our first concern and priority. What is urgently needed in the Mediterranean are predictable arrangements to ensure disembarkations of rescued persons can take place safely,” spokesman Margaritis Schinas said.
A similar impasse was resolved last month when Malta allowed two to disembark 49 migrants two NGO-operated vessels, including Sea-Watch 3, after the EU brokered a deal to distribute the migrants among eight EU nations.
UNICEF’s spokesman in Italy, Andrea Iacomini, lamented the frequency of such stand offs.
“Is it possible that Europe enters into a sort of humanitarian paralysis every three days for dozens of human beings, including children, without coming up with a structural and shared solution,” Iacomini said. “I hope that European governments find a speedy agreement for a humanitarian solution that offers a safe port to the eight unaccompanied minors on the Sea-Watch. A child is a child, not a hostage.”
47 migrants stranded off Sicily as Italy refuses entry
47 migrants stranded off Sicily as Italy refuses entry
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
