Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 27th November 2020
Case name: 2020_11_27-WM534
Situation: 13 travellers left from Zeralda towards Spain, after many days it was still not possible to confirm whether they had arrived.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean
Summary
On Friday the 27th of November at 20.15 CET, the Alarm Phone shift team was informed by a relative of a boat that had left from Zeralda, Algeria on the 24th in the evening at around 18.00 CET. Onboard were 13 travellers. The relative was not sure where in Spain the travellers were aiming at arriving and had not had contact to the travellers since they departed. Neither we nor relatives were able to reach the boat for the next many days, despite continuously trying to call them. At 21.30, we called the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo. They told us to call the police in order to confirm whether the travellers had arrived, and did not take the information we tried to provide about the travellers who could at this point still be at sea. We therefore provided this information to Salvamento Maritimo via email as well.
In the meantime, we also advised relatives on ways to search for missing family members with the help of NGOs. In a call to Salvamento Maritimo the following evening at 18.42 they informed us that a boat with 15 travellers had been rescued on the 25th. From Spanish media we also learned about arrivals of other boats with approximately the same number of travellers as the boat in question. However, we had no further information to confirm whether this boat was one of those that arrived in Spain. One of the relatives we were in contact with informed us that they tried to get help to find their loved ones via Red Cross, but that they had had no success with this so far.
The following day, we called the Guardia Civil at 06.58 asking about boats matching this case. They told us that there had only been a few arrivals in the past days, and that none of them matched the information we had received.
We are still trying to figure out what happened to this boat and we will update this report if we manage to get more information. For now, the relatives remain in the horrible limbo of not knowing what has happened to their loved ones. We desperately hope that they have made their way safely and that they will soon be able to get in contact with their anxious relatives.