Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 14th August 2021Case name: 2021_08_14-WM673
Situation: 47 travellers in distress in the Atlantic Sea; Alarm Phone was never able to find out what happened to them.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Atlantic Sea
Summary On Saturday the 14th of August 2021, the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by a relative to a group of 47 travellers, including eight children, in distress in the Atlantic Sea. They had left from Dakhla, heading towards Gran Canaria, the previous morning at around 02.00 CEST. They had thus been at sea for almost 24 hours. We were not able to reach the travellers directly, nor find out their exact location. At 01.15 CEST we alerted the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo to tracellers in distress. They confirmed that they would carry out a search and rescue operation involving one of their aircrafts as soon as the sun had risen.
We continued trying to reach the travellers without success. In the evening, Salvamento Maritimo told us that their aircraft was still searching for the travellers, So far they had not found them. Just before midnight they paused the search for the night, but confirmed that they would continue in the morning. The following day we Salvamento Maritimo kept looking for the travellers without results, and the Moroccan navy told us that they had not intercepted a boat matching the description we gave them.
After several days of attempting to reach the travellers, we had to close the case without knowing what happened to them. The relative we were in contact with also did not have news, and we were not able to match this boat with any case mentioned in local media. We fear that the travellers have become some of the countless invisible victims of the European border regime, forcing people to embark on increasingly dangerous journeys.
Tweet about the case:
https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1428344090526162952
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