Reading Community Posts About the Ghost Boat

What the families were sharing in the aftermath of the disappearance.

Since the disappearance of the Ghost Boat in June 2014, the families of people who were supposed to make the journey from Libya to Italy have been sharing a number of campaign posts and images, mainly on Facebook.

We have already addressed most of the theories put out there, but it’s worth looking at them to see what information—and misinformation—is out there.

The summary of the contents of the posts

There are two threads regarding the Ghost Boat and its passengers:

1. That all the passengers have made it to Italy, and they are confined in a place called Pozzallo because the boat also had carried cocaine.

2. They are still confined somewhere in Libya.

One post also says that people have come to believe that there were 197 Eritreans on board, including two are pregnant women—one on her eighth month of pregnancy. The boatman, it claims, is Tunisian.

Other information:

• The passengers all paid $1,600 before the journey date.

• The journey was supposed be on June 20 but due to a bad weather forecast, it was postponed for the 27. There are some who believe that the journey was also postponed for another unknown day from the 27, due to the same reason.

• The person who received the $1,600 from each of the passengers and who was the link between the passengers’ relatives, friends, and the boatman, informed the families and friends of the passengers that they all started the journey. But when families asked him to provide the phone number of the man in charge of the boat, he was elusive and said he hadn’t saved the number on his phone.

• On June 30, one of the smugglers contacted one of the families of the passengers and told him to meet his relatives. He waited for ages, until he he gave up and started confronting the smugglers via the phone.

• On July 2, the same man who informed the family about the passengers’ departure started informing people that the boat has indeed reached Italy but that the passengers were under arrest for being in possession of controlled substances.

• However, no radar or satellite picked up any signal.

• There is speculation that financial conflict between the smugglers in Sudan and Libya might have contributed to this situation, and that the passengers are still in Libya confined somewhere until they pay again or resolve the issue.

• It could be another tactic to get more money from the families.