An Italian coast guard ship carrying migrants who allegedly made death threats against the crew of a merchant vessel after being rescued in the Mediterranean docked in a port in Sicily on Thursday.<\/p>\n
But the 67 migrants on board were not immediately allowed to disembark.<\/p>\n
Instead, police and prosecutors boarded the Diciotti patrol ship to try to identify the migrants who made the threats \u2013 allegedly two men from Ghana and Sudan.<\/p>\n
Rome says they made the threats because they were afraid of being handed over to the Libyan coast guard and sent back to Libya.<\/p>\n
Matteo Salvini, Italy\u2019s hardline interior minister, called the alleged aggressors \u201cpirates\u201d and \u201ccriminals\u201d and said he wanted them led off the ship in handcuffs.<\/p>\n
The migrants were rescued in the Mediterranean by an Italian-flagged oil rig supply vessel, the Vos Thalassa, on Sunday.<\/p>\n
They were then transferred to the coast guard patrol ship and brought to the port of Trapani in western Sicily.<\/p>\n
Speaking in Innsbruck, where he was attending a meeting of EU interior ministers, Mr Salvini said: \u201cWe are in no hurry to let them disembark. If it is shown that some of the migrants were violent, they will go to prison.\u201d<\/p>\n
Opposition MPs called him heartless and said that the three women and six children on board should at least be allowed onto dry land.<\/p>\n
"Those six children are not criminals and need to be allowed to disembark straightaway," said Debora Serracchiani, an MP from the centre-Left Democratic Party.\u00a0<\/p>\n