Background
The 243 people in the group who were to leave Libya paid $1600 to get to Europe. [6] Measho Tesfamariam arranged the trip and "handled communication, logistics, and payment for the big smugglers". [7] There were three other individuals who helped fill the boat: Ibrahim, Jamal el-Saoudi, and Jaber, all of whom have Sudanese passports (although Jamal is Eritrean). [8] Ibrahim was in charge of arranging the trip and the passengers and families' contact. [7] Measho Tesfamariam says that the boat was due to depart from the Libyan Khums (Al-Khums) beach, but he didn't witness the departure. [8] Tesfamariam was arrested on December 2, 2014 on people-smuggling charges. [7] Meanwhile, Eritrean Jamal el-Saoudi, who was the manager of the Tokhla group smuggling operation that arranged the ghost boat group's journey, lives in Libya where he is a well-connected man. [7]
Most of the passengers were Eritreans fleeing the highly repressive military regime that rules the country. [2] [9] At the time, around 5,000 Eritreans fled the country every month. [9]
Investigation
Experts say that such a large boat sinking would have left some trace. [2] “It’s really strange,” says Othman Belbeisi, who is the International Organization for Migration’s country director for Libya. [2] Refugee advocate and migration expert Fausto Melluso, with the Italian organization Arci in Sicily, said, “It is inconceivable that a boat with that many people can go missing in 2014 and nobody know about it.” Alganesh Fisseha, an Eritrean political activist who fled the country herself, is an expert on refugee issues. She said that it was the "first time she has heard of such a large group of people going missing without a trace. ... 'It is impossible that they disappeared into thin air.'” [4] During the Lampedusa migrant shipwreck on October 12, 2013, more than 360 deaths were reported, with just 155 survivors. In that case, bodies were spread out over the ocean.
Eric Reidy had been working as a reporter in Tunisia when he heard that refugee activist Meron Estefanos was investigating reports surrounding the ghost boat. She was looking into a mysterious phone call to relatives of those on the ghost boat that the passengers were detained in a Tunisian prison. [10] However, further digging revealed that the phone calls turned out to be a false lead. [10]
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On 3 October 2013, a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. It was reported that the boat had sailed from Misrata, Libya, but that many of the migrants were originally from Eritrea, Somalia and Ghana. An emergency response involving the Italian Coast Guard resulted in the rescue of 155 survivors. On 12 October it was reported that the confirmed death toll after searching the boat was 359, but that further bodies were still missing; a figure of "more than 360" deaths was later reported.
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Operation Sophia, formally European Union Naval Force Mediterranean, was a military operation of the European Union that was established as a consequence of the April 2015 Libya migrant shipwrecks with the aim of neutralising established refugee smuggling routes in the Mediterranean. The operational headquarters was located in Rome. The EU mandate for the operation ended on March 31, 2020. Operation Irini is the successor operation.
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The Libyan Coast Guard is the coast guard of Libya. Organizationally part of the Libyan Navy, it operates as a proxy force of the European Union (EU) in order to prevent migrants from endangering their lives during attempts to cross Mediterranean sea by illegal means of entry the EU Schengen territory. As of 2015, the Libyan Coast Guard consists of over 1,000 personnel. Since 2015, it has received $455 million in funding from the EU. The Libyan Coast Guard is being accused of being involved in human trafficking, enslavement, torture, and other human rights violations.
Meron Estefanos is a Swedish-Eritrean human rights activist and journalist. She first became known in the Eritrean refugee community in 2011 for helping people who had been kidnapped and tortured by human traffickers on their way to Israel in order to extort ransom money from their relatives, exemplified in the 2013 documentary film Sound of Torture. After the migrant and trafficking routes changed to Libya, her efforts continued and uncovered criminal networks reaching into Europe. As of 2022, Estefanos deplored that no traffickers had been brought to justice, with little interest from national governments and international organisations.
