by Christian Spillman
ROME, July 21 (AFP) - Italy has deported the first five of 37 African would-be immigrants whose arrival in Sicily last week on a German aid ship provoked a diplomatic row with Berlin, the Italian news agency ANSA reported Wednesday.
It said the five, all Nigerians, had been repatriated late Tuesday.
The interior ministry was not immediately able to confirm the report.
But Italy again rebuked the German aid workers who rescued the drifters, with Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu blasting them as "manipulators" who had been looking "to get the most publicity possible" out of the sensitive immigration issue, in comments before parliament Wednesday.
Italian officials had Saturday refused asylum to all 37 of the Africans picked up the Cap Anamur ship in the Mediterranean, recommending 14 be deported but giving 22 others temporary permission to stay on humanitarian grounds.
A final decision was still awaited on the 37th person, the first who apparently acknowledged he was not from Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, as the German relief workers had reportedly contended.
Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said "a detailed police enquiry showed that none of them were Sudanese, and that 31 were from Ghana and six from Nigeria" -- confirming assertions Saturday by an interior ministry spokesman.
Cap Anamur says it picked up the immigrants floating on a dinghy in the Mediterranean on June 20 but the ship did not dock in Sicily until more than three weeks later -- after a squabble over which country should take them in and when conditions on board were deteriorating.
The case sparked a diplomatic row, with Italy relenting under pressure to take in what even the Vatican complained had been made a "ship of shame".
Immigration is a political hot potato in Italy, seen as a gateway to Europe for African refugees.
Rome has toughened up laws to curb the daily landings along its long coastline, but Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's embattled coalition is under even more pressure from one of its coalition members to crack down much harder on immigration.
Italian authorities have said they were told a "pack of lies" to force them to let ashore the refugees, who were picked up near Libya. They contend that under EU rules the refugees should have been dropped off in Malta, the ship's first port of call, but the Maltese justice ministry said it was never told about the 37 on board.
"A ship flying a German flag, belonging to a German humanitarian organization and commanded by a German citizen did everything it could to drop off 37 supposed refugees in Italy and not in Germany, nor in Libya from where they lift, nor in Malta, its first port of call," an angry Pisanu told Italian deputies.
"Two million more poor souls are in Libya also waiting to leave and a few hundred criminals are ready to put them on any old boat" to send them to Europe, he warned.
The head of the Cap Anamur organization, Elias Bierdel, the ship's captain Stefan Schmidt and his first officer Vladimir Dhchkevitch were arrested when the ship docked in Sicily on July 12.
They were released Friday under pressure from Berlin and left Italy, though their ship was impounded and the three must still appear before an Italian judge.
The three face up to 12 years in jail and a fine of 15,000 euros (18,500 dollars) for each immigrant they brought into the country if charged and convicted for abetting illegal immigration, and "flouting national immigration rules... for the sake of publicity", according to court records.
Cap Anamur, set up in 1979, fights for refugee rights and says it has saved some 10,000 people from death at sea.
Bierdel on Monday defended his actions, but they have also stirred controversy at home.
German Interior Minister Otto Schily has criticised Bierdel but Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul condemned Italian authorities for "treating the members of a committed non-governmental organisation as criminals."