Katie Hopkins Ship ARRESTED AGAIN

While pro-am motormouth Katie Hopkins has a trip to Los Angeles to look forward to, along with an allegedly live appearance at Politicon this weekend, those to whom she has been giving both endorsement and encouragement are not faring so well, although the entertainment value is becoming better by the day. But the fortunes of the migrant-bashing far-right are not, as events in the eastern Mediterranean have showed.

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The C-Star, the ship which Ms Hopkins was going to join on its trip around the Med looking for migrants to send back somewhere, but which she failed to do so as it was arrested by the Egyptian authorities and held at Port Suez, has now moved north. As Hope Not Hate has told, “The C-Star is currently anchored in the port of Famagusta, under jurisdiction of the northern Turkish half of Cyprus. Defend Europe’s vessel had been changing its crew in Cyprus and was preparing to set sail again today”.

Except the C-Star won’t be setting sail anywhere for a while. Hope Not Hate again: “Reports out of Northern Cyprus suggest that the C-Star, the former floating armoury being used by right-wing extremists to hinder humanitarian rescue vessels in the Mediterranean, has been stopped, its crew forced to leave and its captain arrested”. Oh dear!

Moreover, “According to the Ankara Degil Lefkosa blog, Defend Europe told the port’s customs and immigration authority that the C-Star was ‘an EU ship aiming to rescue refugees from the sea’ … However, the ship is neither an ‘EU ship’ - given it was previously flagged under the Djibouti, and probably now the Mongolian, flag - nor do its intentions involve ‘rescuing’ refugees”. That much was bad. But it then got much worse.

Katie Hopkins and her new pals. Peter Sweden, the one at top right in the yellow top, is a self-confessed Holocaust denier

As the Guardian has now reported, “Nine people from C-star, a ship hired by far-right group Generation Identity, arrested in Famagusta with 21 south Asians onboard”. Whoops! There was more: “The crew of a ship hired by a European far-right movement aiming to disrupt migrant rescues in the Mediterranean has been arrested in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus for alleged people-smuggling, after 21 south Asians were found onboard”.

And more: “Faiki Pasa, a local human rights activist, said nine crew members, including the captain, were arrested and remanded in custody … The boat’s Scandinavian owner was also placed in detention as police looked into whether those held should be charged with people-smuggling … ‘Twenty-one Sri Lankans were on the ship, some said they had paid smugglers to be taken to Italy,’ Pasa told the Guardian. ‘The crew will be held in custody before they are brought to court. It is very likely they will be deported’”.

The excuse advanced this time? Defend Europe, the motley convocation of Nazis, white supremacists and hangers-on involved with the C-Star, has “said 20 of those onboard were apprentice sailors undergoing training”. A big boy did it and ran away.

The rich irony of a group setting out to “defend Europe” from all those migrants, while getting itself charged with smuggling migrants into Europe, will be lost on no-one. Nor should it be lost on those at Mail Online who still allow Ms Hopkins to post her bile at their site. Will they really wait until November to wave her goodbye?