An NGO rescue boat captain who has risked jail time after forcing her way into Lampedusa port in Italy with 40 migrants onboard has defended her act of “disobedience”, saying it was necessary to avert a tragedy.

“It wasn’t an act of violence, but only one of disobedience,” the Sea-Watch 3 skipper, Carola Rackete, told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Sunday, as donations poured in for her legal defence.

Rackete, 31, from Germany, is accused of putting a military speedboat and the safety of its occupants at risk in the incident on Saturday.

“The situation was desperate,” she said. “My goal was only to bring exhausted and desperate people to shore. My intention was not to put anyone in danger. I already apologised, and I reiterate my apology.”

The Sea-Watch 3 had rescued the migrants off the coast of Libya 17 days earlier. They were finally allowed to disembark at Lampedusa and taken to a reception centre as they prepared to travel to either France, whose interior ministry said it would take in 10 of them, or to Germany, Finland, Luxembourg or Portugal.

The Italian coastguard seized the rescue boat, anchoring it just off the coast.

Rackete, who was placed under house arrest, is expected to appear before a judge early this week in the Sicilian town of Agrigento to answer charges of abetting illegal immigration and forcing her way past a military vessel that tried to block the Sea-Watch 3. The latter crime is punishable by three to 10 years in jail.

Her arrest prompted a fundraising appeal launched by two prominent German TV stars, which had raised more than €350,000 (£314,000) by midday on Sunday.

The comedian Jan Böhmermann, who launched the campaign with the TV presenter Klaas Heufer-Umlauf, said in a video posted on YouTube: “We are convinced that someone who saves lives is not a criminal. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply wrong.”

Rackete has become a leftwing hero in Italy for challenging the “closed-ports” policy of the far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini.

“I didn’t have the right to obey,” Rackete said. “They were asking me to take them back to Libya. From a legal standpoint, these were people fleeing a country at war [and] the law bars you from taking them back there.”

The head of the NGO that operates the ship, Johannes Bayer, said Sea-Watch was “proud of our captain”.

Böhmermann accused Salvini of “abusing rescuers at the Mediterranean Sea in order to turn the mood against refugees, against EU, and for an inhumane politics”.

Salvini welcomed Rackete’s arrest. “Mission accomplished,” he tweeted. “Law-breaking captain arrested. Pirate ship seized, maximum fine for foreign NGO.”