Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 13th of September 2020
Case name: 2020_09_13-CM298
Situation 62 people pulled back to Libya
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of the Case:
At 20:44 CEST on 13 September we were phoned by a group of people in distress. They had left Libya three days previously and were out of food and water. The boat was overloaded and moving very slowly. The connection dropped before we were able to get a position. We forwarded what information we had to the European coastguards, copying in their so called counterparts in Libya. This did not appear to have any effect.

We were not able to get back in touch with the boat until around about 03:30 in the morning of 14 September, when the travellers called us again. We were still unable to get a position. We remained in sporadic contact until 10:40. The connection was always too poor for us to get a proper position.

Fortunately, a relative got in touch with us who had been able to get a position from the travellers. They also told us that the group consisted of 62 people. We forwarded the position and the information to the coastguard.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon, evening and night we picked up bits of information from the Internet and from the press liaison officer of the so-called Libyan coastguard suggesting that two ships had been intercepted by the so-called Libyan coastguard and one group had been rescued by the ASSO 29. The next morning we received confirmation from the relative that group had been rescued by “a libyan tanker ship”, taken back to Tripoli, arrested and placed in jail. It is unclear to us if the rescue by Asso 29 is connected to this pushback or not.