18/05: 95 people returned to Libya after having reached Maltese waters.
Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 18th May 2021
Case name: 2021_05_18-CM443
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to 95 travellers in distress in Maltese SAR. After many hours of drifting, they were returned to Libya by the so-called Libyan coastguard.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of the case:
On Tuesday the 18th of May 2021 at 15.50 CEST, the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by a relative to a group of 95 people in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea, travelling on a . The relative had last had contact to the travellers at 13.00 CEST, where they had received a position showing that the boat had already made it to Maltese waters. After a couple of attempts, at 16.12 CEST we managed to establish direct contact to the boat. The travellers told us that their engine had broken down and that they were now adrift. At 16.26 CEST we sent an email to all relevant authorities, including the Italian and Maltese coastguards, passing on all the information we had about the situation. Half an hour later, we sent them another email urging them to order a supply vessel in the vicinity to conduct the rescue operation in the absence of other rescue vessels in order to prevent the loss of lives. At 17.40 we tweeted about the situation:
SOS! 95 people adrift in Malta SAR!
The boat is only 15nm from the 88 people we were alerted to earlier. They are tired and have had no food for 2 days. The supply ship #Maridive230 is less than 10nm away. @ArmedForcesMT has to coordinate a rescue immediately!. At 18.31 CEST we wrote another email to the authorities with an updated position of the boat, alerting them that if was drifting south due to the wind.
We were never again able to reach the boat, and by monitoring their satellite phone credit online we could also see that they were not communicating with anyone else. Online, we could see that the supply vessel we previously had informed the authorities about had been very close to the position we received from the travellers but continuing towards Tunisia. At 04.00 CEST we called the Tunisian coastguard, but they were not aware of the distress of the travellers and did not have information about a supply vessel disembarking with rescued people. The Maltese coastguard did not answer our calls, and the Italian coastguard only told us to contact the “competent authorities”, presumably meaning the Maltese or so-called Libyan coastguards, both of which have time and again failed to rescue travellers in distress in their search and rescue zone. At 04.30 CEST we sent an email to all authorities again, asking them whether the supply ship had carried out the rescue operation of the boat in distress. However, we never received a reply to this email.
The next day at 14.25 CEST we tweeted: UPDATE: We lost the contact to the ~95 people 23 hours ago and don't know if they were returned by the so-called Libyan Coastguard and if they are still alive. We demand information by authorities: What happened to the boat in #Malta SAR?
Later in the afternoon the relative informed us that the travellers had been intercepted by the so-called Libyan coastguard and were back in Tripoli.