Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 14h of September 2020
Case name: 2020_09_14-CM299
Situation 27 people forced back to Libya
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of the Case:
At 12:34 CEST on 14 September, we were contacted by a group of travellers in difficulty who had left Libya at around 18:00 the day before. The group consisted of 27 people, including 5 women and 14 children. They were very low on fuel. We had problems trying to understand each other and the line kept breaking. We were given various possible positions, but communication was poor and we were not confident that the position we had received was correct. We tried to ring the travellers back, but were unable to reach them. At 19:21, unable to raise the travellers, and fearing the worst, passed on what information we had to the authorities.

That evening and throughout the night we picked up bits of information about various boats had been intercepted by the so-called Libyan coastguard or pulled back by an oil tanker. We continued trying to phone the boat, but were not able to reach them. In the middle of the afternoon of 15 September, the satellite phone was answered by one of the travellers. They were back in Libya. We put out the following tweet:
Yesterday, people on 2 boats reached out to Alarm Phone, one carrying ~30, the other ~60 people. We alerted authorities and hoped for rescue but, in the end, both groups were forced back to #Libya.
A third boat, which had not called us, capsized and 20 people are missing.