THE CREW of a charity-run refugee rescue ship disembarked over 230 people at a port in north-west Italy today.

The Geo Barents, a vessel run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), initially saved 69 people, including 25 minors, from an overcrowded rubber boat in international waters off the coast of Libya on Tuesday.

Following the rescue, the Italian authorities ordered the Geo Barents to sail almost 700 nautical miles away to the northern Italian city of La Spezia — this would be like Britain’s RNLI being told to disembark people rescued in the waters off Guernsey in Orkney.

Palermo and Pozzallo — cities on the Italian island of Sicily where NGO rescuers had been disembarking refugees before Italy’s far-right government issued a decree earlier this year ordering ships to sail directly to Italy following each rescue — were about 410 nm and 216 nm away respectively.

On the following day, as the Geo Barents was making its way north, the activist-run distress hotline organisation Alarm Phone alerted the crew to a second refugee boat near its position.

On the way there, the ship came across a third boat in distress, and ended Wednesday with 237 refugees, including 87 kids, after the rescues were complete.

Nejma Banks, the Geo Barents cultural mediator, said today that she could not help thinking about what would have happened if the Geo Barents followed the Italian authorities’ orders and ignored the refugees distress calls.

“Many of them have witnessed their friends drown,” Ms Banks said. “Many of them have ... had family members who died crossing the sea.

“If we were not there ... these people would not have been here.”