Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – November 9th 2020Case name: 2020_11_09_AEG719
Situation: 60 people in distress near Zakynthos, their fate is unclear
Status of WTM Investigation: Ongoing
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea
Summary
On Monday, November 9, the Alarm Phone was alerted to a distress case near the Greek island of Milos. A big sailing boat of about 22m was carrying approximately 60 people fleeing from Turkey towards Italy. The last known position, from 09:00 CET, was off the coast of the small Greek island of Antimilos (position: 36.825730, 24.231551). When we called the Greek Coast Guard at 10:15 CET, they informed us that they already knew about the boat and that they were trying to help. At 11:26 CET, we received and published a video showing a small boat of the Hellenic Coast Guard towing the sailing boat along the coast of the island. An expert from Forensic Architecture confirmed that the island in the background was Antimilos by matching it with resources available online. We asked the Hellenic Coast Guard where they were taking the travelers, but they refused to give any information. They simply repeated, “everything ok”. Since then, we have not been able to reestablish contact with the people from this boat. On November 13, however, the Turkish Coast Guard published news about the rescue of 70 people from a sailing boat off the coast from the province of Izmir (Seferihisar district). According to the information on the website the rescue was conducted on November 12 at 21:30 (prob. UTC+3). An additional picture published on the website shows details that match those in the video the Alarm Phone had received: a white mast, a blue roof tarp, yellow life jackets, and the clothing of the people on the sailing boat. It nevertheless beggars belief that the Hellenic Coast Guard would perform a highly dangerous tow-back of the sailing boat all the way to Turkish waters. We are still investigating what happened to the people.
Twitter Chronology
November 9th
10.34 CET https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1325737631314026496
13.31 CET https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1325776841848852481
17.48 CET https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1325841666427793408
23.43 CET https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1325931781716135936
November10th
12.48 CET https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1326129436228538372
Last update: 18:41 Mar 22, 2021
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