“We have never come across a boat out at sea and said ‘Let them be.’”
Martin Xuereb is the director of Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), an NGO based in Malta that operates life-saving services for refugee boats.
This post is a piece of evidence in our open investigation into the disappearance of a group of at least 243 refugees in 2014. We’re asking for your help to find them: Please take the time leave notes, responses, highlight important information or dig in to see what else you can discover.
— Interview conducted by Eric Reidy.
When did MOAS start operating?
In 2014 we were out at sea for 60 days as from the end of August, so we were at sea in September and October 2014.
Just after the time period where this incident took place?
Yes.
When you’re informed about a rescue operation that needs to take place, how are you informed? How do you know that there’s a boat in the Mediterranean with refugees that needs assistance?
Well first of all, MOAS at sea is both proactive and reactive. Proactive in the sense that we do our own patrolling. This year and last year we positioned ourselves closer to Bouri Oil Fields round about 35 miles north of Libya. We patrol with the boat, but more importantly we patrol with the drones. That’s us being proactive.
Anything we see which we term as a vessel of interest, we inform the rescue coordination center of Italy. We provide them with the information that we are seeing, the size of the boat, whether it’s underway, how many people we think are on the boat, whether the boat appears to be safe, what the weather conditions are. Then obviously if the captain feels that there is imminent danger to loss of life then he’s going to intervene straight away without getting specific direction from the rescue coordination center.
If not, then obviously there is a discussion. In all the cases we’ve come across since we’ve been out at sea, in a boat that is seen progressing towards Europe—and they are always overloaded boats—the rescue coordination center terms those to be vessels in distress. They declare a search and rescue case and then they task us to pick up the people on our own vessel once they’ve declared it to be a rescue case.
We have never come across a case where there is a boat out at sea, whether it’s underway or whether it’s stationary, where the rescue coordination center said, “Oh let them be.” That is not the case. That has never happened in the days we spent out at sea.
Sometimes they tell us, of course provided that there’s no imminent danger to loss of life, sometimes they tell us, “provide leeway, stay next to them, give them life jackets and we are going to send one of our boats.” If there is an Italian coast guard boat for example or else if it’s a boat with 600 people and we have capability of taking only round about 400, 425 people at most. There is a discussion, but people’s lives are never put at risk. That’s us being proactive. Us being reactive is actually getting the call—and this is in the great majority of cases—by the rescue coordination center in Rome telling us that they have been informed of a boat in distress and telling us the coordinates that have been given to them.
Usually what happens is, when the migrants go past the Libyan territorial waters, say they’re 15 miles out and underway, they call themselves the Rome rescue coordination center. Sometimes they also call other people. In the case of the Eritreans they call Father Mussie Zeria.
Sometimes they call here as well. Sometimes they call UNHCR as well and then sometimes these people, Father Mussie Zeria, sometimes does send them an email with the coordinates to the rescue coordination center and then he copies us. The tasking however always comes from the rescue coordination center. Normally that is how the rescue coordination center becomes aware of a boat that is sailing towards Europe.
Has MOAS rescued boats where there was no satellite phone on board?
Yes there have been cases, there are those cases that the satellite phone goes out of battery, or else they can’t use it properly. Normally if you manage to make a call then you can track the position where that call was made through the service provider. Obviously that takes a while and if the boat is underway they wouldn’t be in the same spot but then you have more or less a rough idea of where to look for them. Yes, there have been instances where they didn’t have a satellite phone.
There are also instances where they do not have a satellite phone but they would have thrown it overboard when they see that they’re going to be assisted. There are also instances when they are reported, the vessel, which is underway, is reported by the fishermen or merchant ships, normally when a fisherman or a merchant ship sees a migrant vessel they report it to the rescue coordination center.
Yes, there have been instances where the migrants themselves were not able to give their position. Sometimes they also call and say, “We don’t know exactly where we are.” They won’t be able to give their position, all they radio to say is that we left Zuwarah 12 hours ago for example.
So Libyan territorial water ends 15 miles off the coast?
It ends at 12 miles. Libyan territorial water is 12 miles. Normally they wait definitely to go beyond the 12 miles and a bit more. However if this boat … There are however many instances where people are in distress close to the Libyan shore, within the 12 miles. When that happens, they don’t really know how many people perish in that initial part of the journey.
Even because the launching of the craft is, in itself, quite problematic if there are waves that are crashing onto the shore. The launch can be quite problematic and what happens exactly in Libya, in 2015 in particular, there was the Red Cross who was helping the Libyans retrieve bodies but I’ve seen pictures of skeletons on the Libyan shore. The Libyan coastline is huge, hundreds of kilometers of beaches, and some of them are totally out of reach. There is no one who goes there to look and patrol. I wouldn’t put it … It’s really possible that if these people left and were in distress, no one would have known about them.
Again, if they continued moving towards Europe, sometimes we assume that out of sea in the Mediterranean you’ll be picked up anyway. It’s a big sea, the Mediterranean is a big sea, and basically if something happens to them at night then they normally have a compass … Almost all the boats we retrieve there is a compass. Unless, if the compass is erratic or unless there is someone who can more or less read the compass, people can get lost even in the Mediterranean.
In that 15 mile zone off the coast of Libya, is there any type of radar surveillance or satellite surveillance taking place to check when boats are leaving, if there are boats in distress in that zone?
We are talking about Libya here, Libya is almost a failed state. Search and rescue is not their priority. There are, in Zuwarah and in Mitiga, some individuals trying to organize a rescue capability. They do have a few rigs and they do assist from time to time, but they have no functioning rescue coordination center. In territorial waters, and the reason the migrants don’t call whilst in territorial waters because they know that even if the Libyan authorities react, they’re going to take them back to Libya. Sometimes, even when they’re in distress, they fail to call because they’re still in territorial waters and they know that if there is an assistance coming from Libya then they will be taken back.
So would you, or would an Italian naval vessel ever enter Libyan waters to do a rescue ?
We have never done so. The thing is, to enter territorial waters you have to have the authority because that is sovereign territory. You need to have the authority of the state concerned. When the state concerned gives you the authority then obviously you can go and assist. We haven’t ever come across an instance when we were in territorial waters. We have come close to instances where we’re very close and we assisted very close but possibly the Italians have, but I can’t … I’m not in a position to confirm or otherwise.
Is there—either by radar or by your drones or by Italian radar, Italian drones or Maltese radar or satellite—is there any surveillance being done of that area to at least track the movements of boats from the time that they launch or does all of the surveillance begin after Libyan territorial water?
To track them from the time of launch you have to know where and when they’re going to launch. Keep in mind that these are smugglers, this is an illegal activity so they’re not going to say, “Okay we’re going to launch about at such and such a time.” We are not privy to that information, what we do is assist boats in distress. Our mission is at sea, our mission is in support of the rescue coordination center. Our mission is not to determine when boats are going to leave in advance and to engage. That is more I think of a border control issue rather than a search and rescue issue.
Are you aware of Italian radar or Italian satellites are covering that area, not necessarily looking for where people are launching or that kind of information but just covering that area? Does the surveillance end where Libyan territorial water begins?
Martin: I have no idea, it’s the Italians that will need to answer that question. As I said, on the boat we have a radar but this is a limited capability and then we have a capability to fly drones, but again the drones we don’t go in territorial waters and we don’t go in the area around about 20 miles from Tripoli because of the flight paths of planes going into Tripoli. I don’t know what exactly what capability and what surface picture the nation states, whether Italy or anyone else, has. I have no idea.
So you are saying that there is a plausible scenario where this boat could have left at night, for whatever reason the satellite phone call was never made and something happened to it within Libyan territorial water and it could have disappeared without a trace.
Yes, and even beyond the Libyan territorial waters, basically if it left … If what happened happened under the cover of darkness, when you’re out at sea in the Mediterranean on a migrant craft and you have a problem, then unless help is at hand it’s, yes, very possible that the boat would have … Again, it’s quite easy for a boat to flip over. These are boats which are not meant to take hundreds of people and even if something happens and the group of people move quickly to one side of the boat, it flips. There have been instances where there have been, I don’t know, arguments on board boats, migrant craft, because you would have, I don’t know, Nigerians, Eritreans and so yeah. Or else it could be that the boat started taking in water and they had no bilge pump or the bilge pump was not quick enough to pump out water.
Again, yeah, I do understand that it is … One would expect if there are 300 people on board one would expect at least one survivor to tell the story, but it is also plausible that this is not the case, depending on what boat it was. Normally there are people in the hold and people in the top deck. People in the hold have no chance of surviving. If the boat goes under they’ll all die, no doubt about that. That leaves the people … It depends on whether they have life jackets. We see many people, the majority of people do not have a life jacket. It might well be, yes, that it’s plausible that they encountered difficulties and somehow the boat disappeared.
At the minute we’re not in the center in the Mediterranean, at the minute we’re in the Aegean. We continue to save lives in the Aegean. Again, there it’s catastrophic at times, so you can’t be everywhere at the same time.
When you save people in the central Mediterranean, do you take them to Malta or do you take them to Italy?
No, we always disembark in Italy on the instructions of the Rome rescue coordination center.
