Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 2nd January 2020
Case name: 2020_01_02-AEG645
Situation: 14 people travelling to Rhodes all drowned
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case:
At 09:18h CET on 2 January 2020 the Alarm Phone was contacted about a boat with 14 travellers (3 women, 11 men) travelling towards the Greek Island of Rhodes. The travellers had departed from Fethiye, Turkey. We were informed that they had last shared a position in Turkish waters at 22:15h on 1 January 2020. We did not manage to establish direct contact with the travellers. At 09:30h on 2 January 2020 we called the Greek Coastguard (CG) who told us that they had already received information about the boat and that it had been intercepted to Turkey. After initial difficulties contacting the Turkish CG, we successfully established a connection with the Turkish CG at 09:58h. The Turkish CG informed us that they had been contacted about this boat previously and were in the process of searching for it.
The relatives who had contacted us had initially heard that the boat had been intercepted to Turkey and the travellers had been taken to a Turkish detention centre.
However on 4 January 2020 we were contacted again by the relatives of the travellers and discovered that the boat had sunk and all of the people on board had drowned. 8 bodies were recovered (3 women, 5 men), and 6 remain missing.
The Alarm Phone communicated with the friends and family of the drowned people many times since the drownings. Several of the bodies had already been identified, but for the majority identification was very difficult or not possible. Syrian relatives (both in Syria and with residence permits in Germany), were unable to get VISAs to travel to Turkey to identify the bodies.
On 9 January 2020, we discovered that the sister of the relatives we had been speaking to had been identified as amongst the dead and we were finally able to definitively confirm that this boat had sunk, and all the people on board are presumed dead.
We will not forget them.