Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations –30th of July 2016

Case name: 2016_07_30-WM111
Situation: Alarm Phone called from boat with 11 people on board in Western Med, intercepted by Moroccan Navy on their way to Spain
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Saturday, the 30th of July 2016 at 7am, a person called the Alarm Phone from Morocco and informed us about his brother, who had left the Moroccan coast together with 10 other people at 5.15am and was not reachable anymore. We asked the contact person to provide us with the place of departure of the boat and with the travellers’ phone number. At 7.20am, we received the phone number and tried to call it immediately afterwards, but without success. At 7.30am, the contact person informed us that the travellers had left from the port of Tangier Med and were heading in the direction of Tarifa/Spain. As he had not been in contact with the travellers for about two hours, we asked him if we should call the coast guard and he said yes. At 7.35am, we called Salvamento Marítimo in Tarifa and forwarded all information we had obtained so far. At 7.45am, we talked to the contact person again, told him that the Spanish coast guard was alerted and asked him got call us again if he received any further information. At 7.56am, we sent an email to Salvamento Marítimo, UNHCR Madrid and CEAR Andalucía, informing them about the case. At 8.05am, we checked the area in question on vesselfinder.com, but were not able to detect any rescue vessel nearby. At 8.34am, we sent another email to two individual email-accounts from CEAR Andalucía. Afterwards, we tried to reach the travellers several times, but again without success. At 8.55am, we talked to the contact person and asked him for another phone number of the travellers on board. At 8.57am, he forwarded a second phone number to us, however, we did not reach the travellers on this number either. At 9.02am, we were finally able to talk to one of the travellers and he informed us, that they had been intercepted by the Moroccan Marine Royal and had been brought to a Moroccan camp. At 9.03am, we informed the contact person about the interception of the boat. After another try to reach the travellers directly, the contact person called us back and told us, that his brother had called him and had informed him, that all 11 travellers were now with the Moroccan police.