This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

An Italian judge has ordered the release of the German captain of a migrant rescue ship who had been placed under house arrest for breaking an Italian naval blockade.

Carola Rackete was arrested after forcing her way into the Sicilian port of Lampedusa on the Sea-Watch-3 carrying 40 migrants and refugees she had rescued off Libya.

But on Tuesday, judge Alessandra Vella ruled that Rackete had been carrying out her duty to protect life and had not committed any act of violence.

Rackete was questioned for three hours in court on Monday over allegations that she had rammed a military vessel which was trying to prevent her bringing the migrants to port on Friday. She apologised to the court and said the collision had been an accident.

Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, who had closed Italian waters to migrant rescue boats, said Rackete would be expelled from the country because she was “dangerous for national security”.

“She will go back to Germany where authorities would not have been that tolerant if an Italian captain had made an attempt on the lives of German police officers,” he said.

Rackete paid tribute to the crew of the Sea-Watch 3 and described the ruling as “a big win for solidarity with all people on the move – including refugees migrants and asylum seekers – and against the criminalisation of helpers in many countries across Europe”.

Rackete’s arrest prompted two online campaigns, which between them raised more than €1m.

A fundraising appeal by two prominent German television stars raised €917,195 from more than 33,000 donors by Tuesday morning, while a second campaign, started by an Italian anti-fascist group on Facebook, had raised a further €433,993 by Tuesday, well over the page’s stated goal of €349,000.

“The wave of solidarity is wonderful,” Ruben Neugebauer, a spokesman for Rackete’s migrant rescue NGO Sea-Watch, told Spiegel Online. “We certainly also need the money.”

The funds will go towards paying Rackete’s legal fees if charges are brought against her. Otherwise, Neugebauer said, the NGO would need about €1m to buy and equip a new ship if Rackete’s Sea-Watch-3 remained out of action.

The German and French governments have ramped up their criticism of Italy over its handling of the case. France accused Italy on Tuesday of acting hysterically over immigration and failing to live up to its duties.

“I think that basically the Italian government has not been up to the task,” a government spokeswoman, Sibeth Ndiaye, told France’s BFM-TV. “Mr Matteo Salvini’s behaviour has not been acceptable as far as I am concerned. This is a painful subject, a complex subject which the EU and France have previously been in solidarity with Italy over.”

Salvini, who heads the far-right League party, Italy’s largest political force, responded: “My behaviour regarding immigration is unacceptable? The French government should stop with these insults and open its ports.”

German politicians have also criticised Italy’s treatment of Rackete in the first signs of a public pushback against Italy’s criminalisation of migrant rescue vessels in the Mediterranean.

“Italy isn’t any old nation,” said Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in an unusually candid interview with the broadcaster ZDF aired on Sunday evening. “Italy is in the middle of the European Union, a founding state of the European Union. And therefore we should be able to expect a nation such as Italy to deal with a case like this in a different way.”

Germany has said it will keep up diplomatic pressure on Italy over the case.