ROME, July 12: Thirty-seven African castaways set foot on dry land for the first time in three weeks Monday after Italy allowed the ship that rescued them to dock at the Sicilian harbor of Porto Empidocle, the ANSA news agency said quoting the local police chief.

However the agency added that the captain of the vessel, Stefan Schmidt, a well-known personality in Germany, risked being charged with facilitating illegal immigration.

The converted freighter, the Cap Anamur, belongs to a radical German humanitarian group of the same name that is dedicated to saving the lives of "boat people" in danger on the sea. It claims to have rescued more than 10,000 people since it was founded in 1979 and given medical aid to 35,000 others.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said the government's decision to let the Africans land was a triumph of humanity over bureaucracy. 'Osservatore Romano said the Cap Anamur had become a "ship of shame" as it languished in a standoff with the Italian navy off the Sicilian coast, forbidden to touch land since the beginning of this month.

The ship picked up the Africans, believed to be mostly Sudanese from the wartorn Darfur region, from a dinghy on the Mediterranean sea on June 20. It then headed to Malta, where it landed some other castaways from Somalia.

Italian officials said that under European Union regulations, Malta was responsible for handling any asylum request since it was their first port of call. For their part the Maltese authorities said that when the ship docked in their country, they were unaware the Africans were on board.

The Cap Anamur committee denied the Africans were illegal immigrants, because they had been rescued in line with common sea-faring practice, had not crossed any EU frontier and had filed an asylum request with German authorities. But a spokesman for the German interior ministry said the 37 Africans would be ineligible for refugee status since "an asylum application in Germany requires one to have reached German territory."

The spokesman said Italy bore legal responsibility for those on board because "the state that is reached first is responsible for accepting asylum applications and the decisions on them."

Italy's center-right government prevaricated and the opposition protested, but immigration is a particularly volatile issue in a country whose long coastlines have left it heavily exposed to clandestine landings.

Earlier, a journalist aboard the boat, Karl Hoffmann of ARD television, said the castaways "were on the verge of physical or psychological exhaustion because of the heat" and that some were threatening to throw themselves into the sea.

Carmelo Casabona, the chief of police in the southern Sicilian town of Agrigento, said the immigrants were being taken to a reception centre in Agrigento.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR welcomed Rome's decision. "We are satisfied with the decision of the Italian government to disembark the refugees," said Laura Boldrini, a spokeswoman.

She said they would get treatment at the reception centre if necessary and undergo identification. "In the meantime Germany can decide on the refugees' requests for political asylum," she added. "They will also be able to make a similar request to Italian authorities if they wish to do so." -AFP