Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 24th of August 2022

Case name: 2022_08_23-Eastern Med - 975

Situation: 70 People rescued after Boat catches Fire and afterwards pushed back to Turkey from south-west of Peloponnese
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded Place of Incident: Eastern Med

Summary of the Case:

In the night between 23rd and 24th of August 2022 the Alarm Phone was alerted by relatives to a boat in distress with more than 70 passengers. They departed from Turkey already on 20th of August in direction of Italy.

We tried to contact the people, but could not reach them on the provided phone numbers. In the meantime, more relatives started reaching out to us. Even though there was lacking information, such as the exact location, relatives told us that the people called 112.

At 4:00 CEST we alerted the Hellenic Coast Guard by email. At 4:12 CEST we also called the coastguard in Piraeus.

In the morning we finally manage to receive a GPS-location by the relatives. The boat had obviously reached the Ionian Sea south-west of the Peloponnese, off the coast of the village Methoni. The distress was described as “something started smoking and the boat cannot move anymore”.

At 9:22 CEST relatives reported that the people said they are towed by the Greek coastguard. They additionally reported maltreatments.

In a phone call at 14:06 CEST the Hellenic Coast Guard in Piraus declared that “the result of the search has been negative so far”. In another phone call at 15:08 CEST the officer on duty stated that they “conducted a search with negative results. No boat found.”

We started to worry that another long-distance pushback might have happened.

On 30th of August we managed to get back in touch with the relatives and via them also with the travellers. Some days later they shared the following testimony:

“I am from Afghanistan. We wanted to got to Italy, but we reached Greece. When a fire started in our ship, a ship from Greece came, but we didn’t stop, because we were scared, because we heard about how Greeks treat people. We tried to continue, but something was not working with the engine, so they caught us. They said “we go to the camp”. They took us on their ship, in a corner. They took phones, jewellery, even cloths. We were very cold. When we asked where they are taking us, they replied “to the camp”. After 7 hours another ship arrived, they took us to Turkish waters, and then one by one they threw us into plastic boats. We asked to give us our bags, at least our phones to call Turkey, but they did not give it to us. We were in three boats floating there and we could not even call the police. Some tourist ship was around, they probably called then the Turkish Coast Guard. So hey rescued us. They took us one day to detention and then released us with deportation order for 15 days. Now we don’t know what to do cause we are afraid of getting deported."

Twitter: https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1562451231238660098?s=20&t=-m_U8Y5ndq0TPhrpa__m9Q%EF%BF%BC