Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 25th June 2020
Case name: 2020_06_25-AEG682
Situation: 30 travellers disappear, pushed-back? rescued? or drowned?
Status of WTM Investigation:
Place of Incident: Aegean sea

Summary of the Case:
On the 25th of June, travellers of a boat with 30 people (15 men, 10 women, 3 of them pregnant,
and 5 children) called the emergency line of Alarm Phone several times. They told the shift-team that a Greek boat came close to their boat, took their gasoline away and left again. At 16:37h CEST they called back to tell that their boat was taking in water and that they were in distress. The shift-team emailed and called Greek Coast Guards (HCG) who answer that they "always rescue". The travellers us called back to tell that they could see the Greek coastguard boat but that they were not rescuing them, but only observing them. This information was denied by the Greek coastguard's headquarters, who told Alarm Phone that no coastguard boat was close to the position we transmitted.
In the next two hours, the travelers called continuously and sent the shift team their GPS position. They were afraid of drowning, they screamed out of fear of dying. At 19:07h CEST, the shift-team was informed by the people on board, that the HCG ship AZ-615 was right in front of their boat. At 19:30h CEST, they informed us that the HCG was right beside them and waiting for another ship to finish the rescue operation. The travellers were now calmer and happy that they would be rescued. During the next hours nothing changed, it became dark and the travelers could not see anything, and began again to panic. The last contact the Alarm Phone had with the boat was around 21:00h CEST. At 21:30h CEST; the shift-team called again the HCG who said they would investigate and that we should call them later. One hour later we received the same answer from the Greek coastguard. The shift-team decided to call the Turkish Coast Guard (TCG) to check if they had more information: the officer said he received an email 2 hours previously and got information from the HCG about an ongoing pushback at the Greek/Turkish border. He confirmed exactly what happened: There was a HCG vessel which was not acting, but just waiting.
The night shift tried all night to call the boat without reaching the travellers. HCG said that they are still investigating without confirming any rescue. TCG did not have any new information.
In the morning, the morning shift team called HCG, who said they "stopped searching because they couldn't find the boat and (thought) that maybe the TCG rescued" them. The shift-team once againg called TCG, who still said that they had no information. During the morning, a Turkish officer said that the TCG saw how the HCG rescued the boat at 7:30h CEST. This sounded hopeful, but it is contradictory to what the HCG told us. All day long the different shift tteams tried to find out what happened, without success. Our shift teams never had contact again with the travelers, neither confirmation about any rescue from HCG.

We are still investigating the detailed developments and will include potential updates into this report


Twitter chronology :
2020-06-25
18:05 : https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1276215013154467840
18:49 https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1276225999680798720
20:05 https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1276245235685867521
22:35 https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1276282920102232066
2020-06-26
18:30h : https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1276546643341520896