What The Smuggler Told Us

Read Ghost Boat episode 9 now

How do you sort truth from reality? So much of this investigation has been an exercise in distinguishing half-truths from fiction; untwisting the tangle of hope, expectation, guesswork and whispers.

So when we met with Measho Tesfamariam, the Eritrean man who acted as a go-between for the Ghost Boat families and the smuggling group who in Libya, we knew it would be a challenge. The stories were as complex and contradictory as ever. Was he part of the smuggling group? A recruiter? Or just another refugee trying to get by?

Meeting him face-to-face took a year. And when we met, he had some explanations—and some important new information about the Ghost Boat passengers.

You can read it all in the latest episode of Ghost Boat.

And then, next week: The final installment, where we take it all back to where it began—and try to answer the most complicated question of all.