Nearly a million dollars has been raised to defend a 31-year-old female sea captain who was arrested after she docked her boat carrying 40 migrants in an Italian port – defying orders to return them to Libya.
In what Italy's populist Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, has called an"act of war," Rackete, the German captain of Sea-Watch 3, entered a port on the island of Lampedusa late on Friday evening after a two-week standoff with authorities. She was taken away in handcuffs moments later, but a fundraiser for her legal defense set up by two German television personalities has raised hundreds of thousands of euros and a campaign to free her is gathering pace on social media.
my goal was only to bring exhausted and desperate people to shore."Salvini has repeatedly celebrated Rackete's arrest, claiming her maneuver put the crews of police vessels at risk. He has taken aim at Rackete for weeks in interviews and on his social media accounts, in a series of attacks characteristic of the hardline politician who has attempted to shutter Italy's borders to migrants fleeing violence or humanitarian crises."I hope ...
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