A Potentially Critical Discovery
Libyan interviews are pulling up incidents that could cast light on the Ghost Boat’s fate.
While our work with Ghost Boat is focused on a particular group of refugees, it is—sadly—only one incident inside the much larger crisis. So it is worth highlighting the fact that UNICEF today published an open letter on Medium asking for more help to find better ways to support those in need.
Three years ago, the leaders of UN humanitarian agencies issued an urgent appeal to those who could end the conflict in Syria. They called for every effort to save the Syrian people. “Enough”, they said, of the suffering and bloodshed.
If you care about the plight of refugees, please share this, recommend it, send it to people who make decisions. The only way we can help the humanitarian situation is to pressure our governments to put saving lives first.
This Just In
Two more pieces of evidence for your examination (one new, one kind-of new).
First, Mohamed spoke to Redha Issa, the director of the Coast Guard in the central Libyan region. He explains some of the discoveries his team has made… and drops news of an abandoned migrant boat discovered in August 2014 (this comes on top of the discoveries near Tripoli mentioned by the Red Crescent a couple of days ago.) We are of course following this up, but if anyone can help read, understand and trace these incidents it would help a lot.
Second, we have a partial translation of the Red Crescent annual report we shared with you yesterday. In it we have highlighted several reports from around the time of the Ghost Boat—including notes on the group of bodies found near Tajoura between July 7 and 11, 2014, previously mentioned by Malik Marsat.
There may also be links to the information dug up by Ross Whiteford a while back.
Report of July 7, 2014 (Page 134)
During the month of Ramadhan, the Body Management team (Tripoli bureau) has recovered bodies of illegal immigrants on the shores of Tajoura Camp. Bodies were transported by the LRC to the Tripoli medical center.
Working out how to trace these bodies and identify them is now a critical part of our investigation. But is there something we’re missing?
Further Reading
In related news, European officials are apparently discussing whether to adopt a new policy to spread arriving refugees more evenly around the continent. This would alter the Dublin Protocol—the rule that effectively means refugees in Europe can only claim asylum in the first country in which they are fingerprinted—something that we discussed at some length in Episode 6.
Meanwhile, over at Deutsche Weile, an interesting headline caught our eyes: “German, Turkish Police Raid ‘Ghostboat’ Human Trafficking Ring.” After a little investigation, it turns out that “ghost boat” (or, more accurately, geisterschiff) is a word used to describe the kind of abandoned vessels used for people smuggling… often they set the autopilot on and just let the boat go on its own, full of people. A different kind of Ghost Boat, but still utterly relevant.
Morsels
Bumper update today, but we should take a moment to highlight some great work from David Phares, who has started mapping out the boat movements gathered by Kirk Pettinga in the earlier phase of the investigation. Does his work mesh with that of Devansh Mehta and his collaborators?
We’re working to bring in more mapping expertise, including groups at Stanford and in London who have shown an interest in helping out. Are you able to help?
It feels like we’re making significant steps here.
Onward.
