Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 22nd July 2021

Case name: 2021_07_22-CM511

Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to around 130 travellers in distress in the Central Med, after not obtaining responses from authorities for more than 24 hours, we finally assume they have been intercepted.


Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of the case: On Thursday the 22nd of July 2021, the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted to a group of around 130 travellers, including 10 women and six children, in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea. They were travelling on a white rubber boat and were drifting as their engine had stopped working. None of the travellers were wearing life jackets and water was entering their boat. In addition, they had run out of food and water. At 17.58 CEST we sent an email alerting all relevant authorities to the situation of the travellers and giving them the exact GPS position of the distress. For the rest of the day and during the following day we stayed in touch with the travellers, monitored their deteriorating situation and forwarded updated information and positions to the rescue authorities. In one call in the early evening, the travellers told us that people on the boat were dying.
At 21.05 CEST we reached out to the company owning a merchant vessel in the vicinity of the travellers. The company owner confirmed that their vessel would carry out a rescue operation if this was coordinated by the Italian maritime rescue coordination centre. We therefore immediately informed the Italian authorities, and urged them to coordinate a rescue with this merchant vessel. However, they were unwilling to tell us whether they would coordinate this and as we could see online that the merchant vessel did not proceed towards the position of the travellers we must assume that the order to rescue was not given.
Finally, in the early hours of the morning the so-called Libyan coastguard confirmed to us on the phone that they intended to send a vessel to the position we had given them. However, we were not able to receive any further information from the so-called Libyan coastguard about an ongoing search and rescue operation.
The following evening, after having tried to obtain information from different actors about what happened to the travellers during the whole day, we tweeted: UPDATE: we haven’t been able to reconnect with the ~130 people in distress for 24h. We assume they were intercepted by the so-called Libyan Coastguard & forced back to Libya, but we didn't get confirmation. It is also unclear if all people survived the journey and the pushback.