The court in the Sicilian city of Trapani has ruled to suspend the administrative detention of migrant-rescue vessel Mediterranea, which is run by the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans, after an appeal presented by the ship's captain, Pavel Botica.

The case dates back to August 23 this year, when after rescuing ten persons in the Central Mediterranean off the coast of Libya, the ship failed to follow instructions by Italian authorities for the destination port to disembark the migrants.

Italian authorities had indicated that the migrants needed to be taken to Genoa, but the ship instead disembarked the migrants at the port of Trapani, Sicily.

"The ten persons, among them three unaccompanied minors, were already badly shaken by the detention conditions and violence and torture suffered during their time in Libya. With waves nearly 3 meters high, we decided to go to the nearest port," the ship's crew explained.

"Leaving shipwrecked persons on board a ship for days, exposed once again to a context that reminded them of the hell they just lived through, is unacceptable. It is like forcing a burn victim to remain in the flames," Laura Marmorale, President of Mediterranea Saving Humans, said on the day after the migrants reached the port of Trapani.

'Maximum sanction not justified'

Federica Emanuela Lipari, the judge overseeing the case, wrote in his decision that despite ignoring Italian authorities' instructions, the actions of the ship's captain did not warrant that as a sanction, the "maximum degree of severity foreseen by the law" should be applied.

"(T)hese actions do not appear to justify the application of the [maximum] sanction," Lipari stated, which is 60 days of administrative detention and a 10,000 euro fine.

"As part of the reasons applied to determine the duration of the administrative detention of the ship, one cannot avoid taking into account, firstly, the concrete modalities of the action by the perpetrator of the violation, who -- far from simply avoiding the indications received by Italian authorities regarding the port to disembark -- tried multiple times to appeal to the administrative authorities, asking for them to re-assign a different port, always motivating this request based on the concrete specific case," court papers further highlight.

"The Captain did not act out of egoism or for profit, but rather to safeguard the rescued persons, to save them from additional navigation time toward the port of Genoa, taking into account of the vulnerable conditions of these persons (which have been documented and proven), in particular for the three unaccompanied minors".