Sea-Watch 3
The ship is powered by two Caterpillar (type: D399TA) four-stroke sixteen-cylinder diesel engines with a total output of 1630 kW, which act on two fixed propellers via reduction gears.
The Rederij West Friesland had it converted into a support ship for seismic research at the Frisian Shipyard in Harlingen.
In June 2018, the ship was arrested by the Maltese authorities in the port of Valletta because it was allegedly not properly registered under the Dutch flag.
Although the proper Dutch registration had already been clarified in July, the Sea-Watch 3 was refused permission to leave Valletta until October for political reasons.
[12] A little later it became known from those around the Italian government that representatives of Germany, France, Portugal, Romania and Malta had agreed to accept the people.
[16] Humanitarian reasons as well as the psychological condition of the "guests" compelled this and the boat claimed the right to call at the next safe haven.
[20] Subsequently, the chairman of the council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, visited the ship, which was not yet docked, to express his support for the crew.
[21] The Sea Watch 3 with twenty-two crew members[22] and two employees of the NDR, including Nadia Kailouli, on board, saved 53 people from Libya.
[23] According to the crew's guest coordinator, there were thirty-eight men, nine women, three unaccompanied minors and three children, most of them from Ivory Coast or Ghana, some from Mali, Guinea, Egypt and Libya.
[24] First ten,[25] and later another three people were brought ashore to Italy, mostly for medical reasons, while forty (thirty-two men, six women and two unaccompanied adolescents) remained on board[24] while the ship entered Lampedusa without a permit.
[25][26][27] The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration appealed to European states to take in the rescued.
[28] On June 21, Captain Rackete and several nationals from various African countries applied to the European Court of Human Rights for an interim order to force Italy to allow the ship to enter.
[29] However, the court rejected the urgent application on 25 June 2019, as provisional measures are only provided if there is an "immediate risk of irreparable damage".
The mayor of the Sicilian capital Palermo, Leoluca Orlando, made the ship's crew honorary citizens.
A Sea-Watch spokesman justified the action with: “It was the last desperate attempt to ensure the safety of the people.” However, a political solution for the migrants had already been agreed at that time: Several EU states, including Germany, had offered to take in those seeking protection.
[40][41][42] The arrested captain faced a fine of up to 50,000 euros for violating the port and water closures and between three and ten years in prison for resisting and using violence against a warship.
[46] On 25 September 2019, the Agrigento public prosecutor's office reimposed the seizure of the ship in order to preserve evidence.
[55] In mid-March 2020, the ship could not leave the shipyard in Messina because spare parts were missing and further, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a crew could not be put together due to travel restrictions.
A migrant who had already shown symptoms when landing tested positive for the coronavirus by the Italian authorities, who then ordered the activists to be quarantined.
The coastal states are not automatically obliged by their sovereignty to let rescued persons ashore, but could instead provide them with medical care on board, for example.
Valentin Schatz, Chair of International Maritime Law at the University of Hamburg says that Italy should have assigned a port.
A week earlier, the ship had left the port of the Spanish city of Burriana to patrol the Libyan coast.
The ship was heavily overloaded when 363 shipwrecked people were rescued on 3 March and had violated regulations when entering Augusta and the crew had contaminated port facilities with hydraulic oil from a crane.
