How Can We Trace This Mysterious Phone Call?

I recently received a piece of information that has added a new wrinkle to our search for the Ghost Boat — and I’m not sure what to do with it. So I’m here to ask for your advice.

About two months ago, I was contacted by a family member of one of the 243 missing people with a piece of information that demanded investigation. They said there had been fresh contact with somebody who was missing.

A woman in Eritrea, I was told, had received a phone call from her brother, who was meant to be on the boat when it left Libya. The call only lasted about 20 seconds, but she recognized his voice immediately — and in the short moment they had, he told her he was still in Libya, apparently being held in some form of captivity, and that other people from the group were there as well.

As you can imagine, the call raised hopes among family members that the missing people might be alive.

So what to do next?

The problem is that we need to verify or disprove this lead. And that’s going to be tough.

Firstly, Libya is a dark spot on the map. Even with the talented reporter Mohamed Lagha chasing information on the ground, it has been difficult to dig up concrete evidence about the Ghost Boat because of the chaos in the country.

And our investigation has conditioned us to be skeptical of stories we hear about phone calls. After all, when we first started working on this project, there was another similar clue that gave us hope of finding the missing refugees: a family member who had received a phone call from a Tunisian number, apparently from somebody who claimed to have seen the Ghost Boat passengers in prison in Tunisia.

We tracked down the origin of that story in Episode Four and, unfortunately, it was a tragic tale of miscommunication, heightened expectations and disappointment. In the end, the phone call wasn’t what anyone thought — in fact, it was just a dead end.

But even with our previous experience, there’s enough here that we have to take it seriously. The problem is that even though the existence of the phone call is a clue, it doesn’t give us anything to follow up on. It was made from an internet number that, as far as we can determine, is untraceable. There was no mention of location, aside from being in Libya—a country that is 900 miles from side to side, and has a population of 6 million. There were no mentions of other names, or places, or distinctive descriptions that might give us a clue of where to start asking questions.

We’re left with a crumb, but there’s no trail to follow.

Quite honestly, we don’t know exactly what to do. That’s why we are turning to you.

First, it’s important that you’re informed about the twists and turns. But second, we need any help we can get on this one. We are looking for ideas about how to follow up on this new trail.

Do you have any suggestions of how to advance or verify this phone call?