Around thirty immigrants, women, children and minors will disembark on the morning of Thursday 23 January at the Isola Bianca port in Olbia .
These are people rescued last January 21 in Libyan waters by the ship Ocean Viking, of the NGO Sos Mediterranée . They were, the NGO explains, "on a rubber dinghy overloaded with people and with water coming in". There are 85 of them and a third of them are under 18 years old .
Why will they disembark in Olbia? A Sicilian court has decided. The authorities have in fact assigned Genoa as the port of disembarkation, "forcing the Ocean Viking to undertake a 4-day journey far from the area of operations" denounces the NGO, which claims to have lost "171 days" since 2022 due to the policy of distant ports, "days in which we could have saved lives and assisted people in danger".
The NGO, which in the meantime continues sailing towards Liguria, has appealed against the assignment of the port and a judge of a Sicilian court has decided that children, minors and women (about thirty people) must disembark at the port of Olbia and then be distributed to various facilities on the island .
The landing is scheduled for the morning of Thursday, January 23. It is likely that Ocean Viking will not dock at the Isola Bianca port, perhaps Coast Guard patrol boats will go offshore to recover the migrants and take them to Sardinia.