NICOSIA, Cyprus — A Cyprus courtroom on Saturday ordered the detention for six days of a Syrian man suspected of illegally bringing 21 Syrian migrants to the east Mediterranean island nation aboard a ship.

Police mentioned the suspect was arrested after the migrants recognized him because the captain of the small boat that had departed from Tartus, Syria. A Cyprus police patrol vessel intercepted the boat off the island’s southeastern tip.

The migrants, who embrace two girls and 6 youngsters aged between 2 and 10, had been taken to a reception middle on the outskirts of the capital, Nicosia.

Cyprus authorities say the island is among the many European Union member nations with the very best per-capita variety of asylum-seekers.

Cyprus is among the many most vocal proponents for an EU-wide migration coverage that would come with all bloc members taking in a chosen variety of asylum-seekers and expedited repatriations for migrants whose asylum purposes have been rejected.

Outgoing Cypriot Inside Minister Nicos Nouris advised a migration convention in Athens this week that the bloc additionally must introduce checks on migrant departures in third nations and punish people-traffickers.

The overwhelming majority of migrants who search asylum in Cyprus enter the ethnically divided island by its breakaway Turkish Cypriot north and cross a United Nations managed buffer zone to use within the internationally managed south.

Cyprus says it leads the EU within the variety of repatriations of migrants whose asylum claims have been rejected. In keeping with official statistics, some 1,172 repatriations happened in January, an nearly five-fold improve from the identical time final yr.

Some 7,600 migrants had been repatriated in all of 2022.