Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations - 23rd of July 2015

Case name: 2015_07_23-AEG24
Situation: 3 vessels in distress in the Aegean Sea, rescued/intercepted by Turkey
Status of WTM Investigations: Concluded
Place of Incidents: Aegean Sea, Turkey

Summary of the Cases: On Thursday the 23rd of July 2015, in the morning, the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by Nawal Soufi’s activist collective to a vessel in distress in the Aegean Sea. The information provided were limited, merely stating that a vessel with 250 people on board had left Egypt on the 17th of July and had sent off a SOS call in the early hours of the day. Later we learned that the vessel had been rescued by the Turkish coastguard.

A few hours later, again through the same activist collective, we heard about a second vessel in distress, carrying 71 people. We reached out to the Greek coastguards who stated that they knew of a vessel in the same area and had informed the Turkish coastguard about the case. In a phone conversation with the Turkish coastguard we received the information that the group of travellers, who were in fact 80 people, were all rescued already.

Shortly afterwards, the activist collective alerted us to a third vessel in distress in the Aegean Sea. Apart from the passengers’ phone number and the vessel’s GPS position from several hours earlier, they could not provide any further details about the case. The travellers could not be reached. A few minutes later we received a confirmation that the third vessel had also been picked up by the Turkish coastguards.

Due to the limited information we had about all three vessels in distress, we cannot conclusively state whether the actions of the Turkish coastguards can be classified as rescue operations or interceptions.