Italian navy ship carrying migrants arrives in Albanian port

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SHENGJIN, Albania (Reuters) – An Italian navy ship carrying a small group of migrants docked in an Albanian port on Friday in an attempt by Rome to salvage a plan to process asylum seekers abroad after a first attempt hit legal hurdles.

The ship arrived before 8 a.m. (0700 GMT), a Reuters reporter said. Only eight migrants rescued near the island of Lampedusa were dispatched on Wednesday.

Italy has built two reception centres in Albania under the first project by a European Union nation to divert migrants to a non-EU country. The facilities in Shengjin and Gjader are staffed by Italian personnel.

Under the deal with Tirana, the number of migrants present at one time in Albania cannot exceed 3,000.

Italy sent an initial group of 16 migrants to Albania last month but they were all brought back within days, the majority of them after a Rome court ruled they could not be held in the Balkan country because of concerns about their legal status.

The military did not say where the new group of asylum-seekers came from. Italian newspapers speculated at the weekend that the government might focus on Tunisians because their country was deemed more stable than many others.

The first group of migrants came from Egypt and Bangladesh, two of 22 countries that Italy had classified as safe, meaning the government believed they could be rapidly repatriated.

The Rome judges questioned this, pointing to a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice, which said a country outside the EU cannot be declared safe unless its entire territory is deemed free of danger.

As a result, the entire group was brought back to Italy to unguarded centres for asylum seekers.