WatchTheMed Alarm Phone Investigations – 14th of September 2018
Case name: 2018_09_14-CM135
Situation: 14 people intercepted by Tunisian military, returned to Tunisia
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: At 7pm CEST on Friday the 14th of September the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by the Tunisian Red Cross about a boat in distress carrying 15 young people. We were told that the boat was close to Lampedusa. Later we received some phone numbers for people on the boat, but were unable to make contact with any of them. At 7:40pm we informed the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (IMRCC) about the case, but they told us they needed more information before they could act and that we should also inform Malta & Tunisia.

After trying to get more details, we emailed MRCC Malta with the little information that we had. At 9:11pm we received a call from IMRCC who requested more information about the case. They told us that they had rescued three boats today to Lampedusa and one to Tunisia, and wanted to know if our case was one of these boats. At 10:33 we received an email with the names of the travellers. At 0:06am IMRCC told us that they had sent rescue ships to the area south of Lampedusa, as they had received information about another boat in that area. During this time we tried many times to make contact with the boat, but our calls were never answered and sometimes did not ring. At 5:07pm we made contact with one of the numbers of the boat, and are told that the person is in Zarzis. At 6:45pm we receive further information from this person – that the boat was around 20 nautical miles from Lampedusa when an airplane came, but no Italian coastguard. After this the Tunisian military came and brought them to Zarzis.