Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 3rd of March 2016

Case name: 2016_03_03-WM85
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to 2 boats in distress in Western Med; 1 rescued to Spain, 1 pushed-back to Morocco
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Thursday the 3rd of March 2016 the Alarm Phone was alerted to two groups of travellers in distress in the Western Mediterranean Sea. The Spanish coastguard rescued one group. In the other case the travellers were intercepted by the Moroccan Marine and by the Spanish Guardian Civil and pushed-back to Morocco.

At 6.20am the Alarm Phone was called from a Moroccan number (case 1). A contact person informed us about 11 persons who had left Hotel Tarifa/Morocco at about 3am in the morning, and forwarded their phone number to us. We tried to call this number several times, but without success. Only at 6.45am we were able to speak to the travellers and they asked us to call the Spanish rescue organization Salvamento Maritimo (S.M.), as they were sure to be in Spanish territorial waters. They also asked us to forward their phone number to S.M. We did so at 6.50am and forwarded all our information to the Spanish coastguard, who promised to call the travellers directly. During the next hours, contact to the travellers could not be re-established again, but at 10.10am another contact person also asked us to alert the Spanish coastguard. We did so at 10.15am and at midday we called Salvamento Maritimo again and this time they confirmed to us that they had rescued 11 men with phone number that we had also been in contact with.

At 1pm, another phone call reached us from a Moroccan number. We asked a translator to call the number back and she learned about a group of 10 people who had entered the Spanish exclave of Ceuta about 8 hours earlier and said that they were at the Grand Port. They asked us to call the Spanish police in order to make them aware that the group had entered Ceuta/Spain, because up to now the Spanish police was not present, but only Moroccan forces. However, at 1.20pm the travellers told us that also the Spanish Guardia Civil was blocking them from entering the harbor. Later on we learned that the travellers had entered Spanish waters by boat but were blocked by the Guardian Civil, which had then alerted the Moroccan Marine who came and took the travellers back to Morocco.