Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 23rd of August 2015

Case name: 2015_08_23-AEG50
Situation: Vessel carrying 300 people in distress in Greek waters, rescued and brought to Italy
Status of WTM Investigations: Concluded
Place of Incidents: Aegean Sea

Summary of the case: On Sunday the 23rd of August 2015, the Alarm Phone was contacted by Nawal Soufi’s activist network and told about a vessel in distress in the Aegean Sea. They forwarded the GPS position of the vessel and informed us that the group of 300 people was made up mostly of (pregnant) women and children who had been at sea for days. They had left from Egypt and were now without drinking water. Following their account they had been threatened by the organiser of the journey who wanted to transfer them onto another vessel which they thought was too dangerous.

We then located the vessel and it was within Greek territorial waters. We turned to the Greek coastguards and passed on the obtained information. They wanted us to reach out to the travellers and ask them to contact the coastguards directly. However, we informed them that they were unable to make or receive phone calls due to the conflict with the organiser. They understood and we agreed to contact them again two hours later. At approximately 5pm the Greek coastguards reported that they had launched a search and rescue operation but that they had no further information.

At 6pm the Greek coastguards informed us that they had already found the vessel but that the people on board had refused to be assisted as they wanted to move further toward Italy. We asked what actions they would now take and they merely stated that they tried but could do nothing more after their help had been declined. As we found this situation peculiar we sought to reach out to the travellers but could not get through to them.

At about 7.36pm we contacted the Greek coastguards again and they said that they had had visual contact to the vessel. Following their account the vessel was still quickly moving toward Italy and the Italian coastguards had been notified.

At approximately 9.43pm the Italian coastguards told us that the vessel was not in distress and that the Greek coastguards were responsible to coordinate the rescue operation. Also in the following hours, the group could not be reached.

A day later, on the 24th of August, no further information could be obtained.

On the 25th of August we were told by the Maltese coastguards at 2.40pm that the vessel had been rescued already and the group was now on a Croatian coastguard vessel headed toward Italy.