Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 31st August 2021

Case name: 2021_08_31-CM555

Situation: 9 travellers in distress off the coast of Libya remain missing after Alarm Phone lost contact to the boat and authorities failed a providing any information about the fate of the travellers.

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of the case: On Tuesday the 31st of August 2021in the early hours of the morning the Alarm Phone shift team received a direct call from a boat in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea. Onboard were nine travellers; five men, three children and one young woman. The travellers had left the previous day at around midday local time on a white fiber glass boat from Tobroq in Libya. They told us that their engine had broken down and that there were high waves and water was entering the boat from the sides. We tried to explain the travellers how to find their exact GPS position on their satellite phone, without success. However, in a later call we managed to receive their position, showing that they were still very close to the Libyan coast. At 05.56 CEST we sent an email to all relevant rescue authorities, including Frontex, passing on all the information we had about the distress case. At 06.20 CEST we called the Italian coastguard who confirmed that they had received our email but claimed to have no responsibility as the distress case was outside their search and rescue zone. We then tried calling the so-called Libyan coastguard but were not able to reach them on any of the phone numbers we tried. We attempted to call the local port authorities of the place of departure of the boat, but none of the phone numbers we could find online seemed to be in use. Finally, at 08.23 CEST we managed to reach an officer of the Libyan coastguard who took the information about the case. A couple of hours later this officer confirmed that the so-called Libyan coastguard would commence a search and rescue operation. Throughout the day we were no longer able to reach the travellers despite continuous attempts, and the so-called Libyan coastguard was not able to provide us any new information about efforts to locate the boat.The following morning we again sent an email to all rescue authorities, informing them that we had lost contact to the boat and urging them to take action and share any information they had about the boat with us.However, we never received a reply from any authorities about a rescue corresponding to our information about the boat. We were not able to reach the travellers again and can therefore not establish what happened to them. We fear that they have lost their lives as a consequence of the deadly European border regime.

Tweets about the case: https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1432639905931333637