Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 12th of February 2019

Case name: 2019_02_12-CM151
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to an emergency situation in the Central Med
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Tuesday, the 12th of February, the Alarm Phone was called in the morning by members of a group of 62 people who were in a situation of distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea. At first, it was difficult to communicate with the group and for some time we were unable to retrieve useful information. At approximately 11am CET, we understood that the group had already been rescued from their boat and were now on a cargo vessel. With the name of the cargo vessel, we were able to contact its shipping company - Contships-Management - around noon. We found out that one of their vessels had indeed performed a rescue of 62 people and had returned them to Tripoli in Libya.

After several attempts we re-established contact with the group at 1.26pm when they were already back in Libyan detention. We were informed that the people had left from Al-Khoms/Libya on Sunday evening and had headed north. Water had entered the boat and the people got tired. On Monday evening, a big boat had approached and rescued them. The crew had told them that they would be brought to Europe but instead they were returned to Libya. At 16.44pm, we sent an email to MRCC Rome, to enquire whether Italy had coordinated the refoulement operation by the cargo vessel. Shortly after, we made the case public by condemning this commercial refoulement operation and by publishing the testimony we had received from one of the travellers, who stated:

“It happened yesterday night around 23:00h. We had been far, we were even thinking we reached Italy when we saw something in front of us that was big like a mountain. The people were suffering, and I thought some of them were already dead. We were 62 people, all men and only one woman. Finally, a boat took us and we entered that boat. They told us ‘we will go to Rome’. Then they gave us some biscuits and also some medication. We fell asleep because we were exhausted. We did not even realise where they would bring us to. At 8:45am we woke up and were in Tripoli. The Libyan police took us from the boat and detained us. We are really suffering here. If we had known before what they would do with us, we should have better died. You know, we had to flee after my father in law was killed. We have nothing left. We cannot go back and not forward. We spent all we had to pay for the ship to Italy. You have to help us! It is in the hands of the Europeans to help us and to end this suffering!”

At 7.02pm, MRCC Rome responded to our email, stating that it had been informed by an aerial asset about this boat in question and then passed this information on to the “competent Libyan Authorities, which communicated to us to be already aware regarding the situation and that they were coordinating SAR activities.”